


Lysergic

by Corvid_Knight



Series: Demonstuck [65]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Demonstuck, Gen, Mind Control, Suicide Attempt, Suicide mention, depressed narrator, oh hey look who's back
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:21:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 28,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23926819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: You should...say something. "What...the hell?""Hmm." One hand comes up to cup his chin thoughtfully. "No, that doesn't apply. Things like me don't go to hell, dear boy."" ...what?""Don't think too hard about it." He shrugs, rolling the chair a foot or so closer to reach for you. "It's early yet—we'll have plenty of time to get to know each other."You don't want him to touch you, but you can't think of how to frame the words to tell him that. Instead, you close your eyes.The cold touch you expect never comes. It's only when you open your eyes to find yourself alone that you realize that you hallucinated all of it.A college student has a few conversations with his own hallucination...and then has to deal with the fact that it's a little more than that.Please check the tags before reading!!
Series: Demonstuck [65]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1003470
Comments: 44
Kudos: 80





	1. Chapter 1

The first time you see the man with no face is also the first time you drop acid. That's not a coincidence, but you're not totally sure at first whether it's correlation or causation—like come on, you're depressed as shit, you're isolated, hell you could probably add malnourishment to the list of possible culprits for this kind of hallucination.

All that would require you to admit you have a problem, of course. Better to just blame the acid. It's not like this even qualifies as a bad trip, really—there's nothing too terrifying about what happens. Not like the horror stories you've heard from the biomed major who thought a shit ton of LSD was a suitable twenty-fourth birthday present—there's no bugs coming out of the walls, nobody's skin falls off (not that there's anyone here for you to hallucinate that on other than your roommate's ex girlfriend Hayley, who likes to come crash on the couch when he's not here, and she's probably not coming out of the living room unless you call her), colors don't start speaking to you.

All that ends up happening is that you lie on your back staring at the cracks on the ceiling. Again. Like you do every other night that someone doesn't drag you out of your room. Sure, they don't usually squirm across the ceiling like demented worms, but this still isn't worth the hype you built up over the last week. It feels like you fucked up—you could have planned something better for your actual birthday, something normal, right? So what if you still don't know anyone at college, nothing's stopping you from putting on real pants and going to a bar or something. You could be getting drunk right now, maybe even a little high on something that isn't straight out of the fucking sixties. You could be performing a reasonable facsimile of normality, even if you can't actually attain it for real.

But no. It's acid and self-pity all the way down, you pathetic bastard. And the acid probably isn't even real.

"If you mean that it isn't potent, you're quite mistaken."

For a second you assume it's your asshole roommate Jason. That's the main reason you bother turning your head—house rules say he stays out of your room without prior permission, preferably in writing. Your tripping doesn't change that unless you're actively dying (which you're not. Obviously.)

But. You turn your head and it's not Jason.

There's a man seated in your desk chair. He's wearing an immaculately white suit with detailing done in the same distinctive green as the pool table in the basement that Jason keeps trying to cheat you out of money on, one leg crossed over the other with his pale hands folded nearly in his lap. He'd be short, if he was standing—less than your five foot seven, you think. His face...

You don't know. Your eyes slide away when you try to look—his skin's so pale it seems translucent, his hair is pure white, and you think maybe, maybe his eyes are the same distinctive green as the details on his suit. Maybe. Somehow, you can't look at them any more than you can look at the rest of his face.

"That's all right, Ray." No face to smile with, but you can hear it in his voice. "The dead tend to lose their faces after a few decades. Of course, that doesn't mean I can't get it back...eventually."

You should...say something. "What...the hell?"

"Hmm." One hand comes up to cup his chin thoughtfully. "No, that doesn't apply. Things like me don't go to hell, dear boy."

" ...what?" 

"Don't think too hard about it." He shrugs, rolling the chair a foot or so closer to reach for you. "It's early yet—we'll have plenty of time to get to know each other." 

You don't want him to touch you, but you can't think of how to frame the words to tell him that. Instead, you close your eyes.

The cold touch you expect never comes. It's only when you open your eyes to find yourself alone that you realize that you hallucinated all of it.

* * *

It isn't until the next morning that you realize the chair's a couple feet too close to the bed. You're late for class (again) so you just...push it back where it goes and haul ass.

After all, what else are you supposed to do? What else could you do?

Nothing.

Don't worry about it.

It's fine.

* * *

The weirdness isn't enough to get you to throw out the breath mint box packed nearly full with tiny, individually wrapped tablets, though. You keep taking it out of your drawer for the next couple weeks—maybe to think about tossing it, but you never really get that far. Instead, you find yourself just standing there like a clockwork toy that hasn't been fully wound, turning the tin over and over in your hands.

You hate feeling like this. You feel like this so often that you really wonder sometimes how you function even at the admittedly subpar level that you're managing now. Sure, your parents call every few weeks to ask why you're pulling such low grades (one day you'll figure out exactly how they know what your grades are and put a stop to that) (yeah, right, like you'll ever have the energy to do anything other than the bare minimum of existence, if that) and you have literally no social life, but at least you're trying. At least you're staying just barely above the point where you'll lose your financial aid. At least you're making it to work on the days you get shifts, at least you get out of bed and eat and shower and do homework on the days when you don't have either classes or work, at least you're not—

At least you're trying. At least you're fucking trying.

And you last exactly fifteen days before you open the little box again. There's an excuse in your head when you pry it open—something about checking to make sure the packets are dry or something like that, which is stupid because what's going to happen to it in your shirt drawer? If it wasn't for the box being in there you wouldn't even open that drawer more than once every few weeks; the shirts you actually wear just get laid in a stack on the desk, then dropped on the floor after you wear them until they're all on the floor and you need to do laundry again.

You need to do laundry now, actually. There's a single shirt left in the clean pile, and you're not even sure when the last time you stripped the bed and ran the sheets at least through the wash was. Now's a good time, too, because Jason's out and Hayley hasn't shown up; you'd be able to stand over the washer and lean against it to feel the vibration without running the risk of one of them coming in and asking what the hell's wrong with you.

You need to do the laundry. You need to put the tin back—well, close it and then put it back—and do the laundry. You need to do the god damn laundry, Ray.

Instead, you put the open box on your palm and stir the context with the index finger of your other hand until you knock one tiny paper-wrapped package out. That accomplished, you do close the box, and you do put it away, and you do pick up your clothes from the floor and carry them out of your room and into the barely-more-than-a-closet laundry room to start the load of laundry that you probably should have done yesterday.

But first, you unwrap the tiny tablet and put it on your tongue. Just like last time, it doesn't taste like anything.

You think you're glad of that.

* * *

"Ray Silva," he says in the moment of silence where the washer pauses to reset itself and move to the spin cycle. Even though you told yourself you weren't going to look, your head snaps up; it makes you dizzy, the sight of your recurring hallucination's out-of-focus face makes it worse, and you close your eyes. "Twenty-four, enrolled in college, suffers from severe clinical depression that's so far gone undiagnosed—would you like to share why, Ray?"

You almost tell him that you're not depressed, but think better of it. Might as well not lie to delusions; it's like lying to yourself but worse. Somehow. "You're my subconscious, why don't you tell me?"

He laughs. You flinch—you can almost taste the sweet rottenness of the sound, see it as a burst of off-yellow and poisonous green against the cool blue backdrop of the washing machine's hum. The synthestia's new; you think you like it more than the other effects, so far. At least it's partially pleasant, and at least his voice is smooth pearly white, blending into the background instead of attacking the surroundings like his laughter did. "My dear boy, don't be absurd. Why would I be your subconscious?"

"I'm tripping balls." That's all this is.

"You're an untrained psychic with enormous latent potential, Ray." He pauses; when he speaks again his voice is closer, nearly in your ear. "Perfect for me, in other words. We're destined for a most lucrative partnership."

The way he says it...you're afraid. You don't know why, exactly, but...yeah. You're afraid. "Get someone else."

"There's no one." He touches you—a hand on your shoulder, and how did you know that his skin would be cool and clammy, like touching some rare unscaled reptile? Except he's not cold-blooded, he's just dead. He told you so last time, the first time. "You're only the second one in nearly twenty years."

"Then—" Shit. Your breath catches , and you have to stop and swallow against your dry throat before you can try again. "Then go get the first one. He's better than me anyway."

Another laugh, just as bad as the first. You wish he'd stop. "Oh, I tried. The empath and his pet had a run of luck, though—the boy understood enough to summon them. It was partly my own fault, I suppose...although I don't intend to make the same mistake with you."

"I don't—I don't understand."

"If everything goes smoothly, you never will." The man with no face squeezes your shoulder once, not very gently, then takes his hand away. "Say hello to the little goth for me, would you?"

"Who?" You know as you ask it that you're speaking to an empty room. As you open your eyes to confirm that anyway, you hear the front door bang open and Hayley call from the living room.

"Yo lameass, come check out my new girlfriend! We're gonna need some pics for Jason to get pissed over, help a girl out?"

New girlfriend. God, you hope she's not a goth.

* * *

She is. You're too tired to be surprised. By the time Hayley and her girlfriend (or whatever she is) get tired of you, you're even more tired—everything about them is grating right now, from their voices to the clothes they wear to the faint and clashing scents of shampoo and soap and hair products that you get every time either of them get closer to you than five feet or so.

That level of sensitivity can't be normal. Should you be worried?

Probably. But that's one more thing you're too tired for. Too tired to worry, too tired to change out of your jeans when they finally quit talking to you and you get to slink off to your room and collapse on your bare mattress in what feels like disgrace. Too tired to open your eyes when you hear the soft sounds of someone ripping a page out of your notebook, but not too tired to feel vague irritation about it.

"...hey. Fuck off."

"Don't be absurd, Ray." That damn smoothly cultured voice again. You've read that the human mind can't make up the image of a face from nothing, that every imagined face is just that of someone you've seen in real life; is it the same for voices? Where the hell would you have heard one like this? "It's no use telling you what you'll need to acquire; you'd simply forget before the drugs cleared your system."

Drugs? Oh. "The LSD."

"It isn't lysergic acid, but yes, your little recreational habit." He chuckles; you can hear a pen scratching across paper. "Don't worry—the number of brain cells you're killing isn't even comparable to the realistic alternative of becoming an alcoholic. That aspect of the collegiate culture is fascinating, by the way—humans are just such idiots at this age, it's difficult to believe that so many of them both willingly exacerbate that and turn so self-destructive the moment they're less supervised. Part of what makes this such a useful environment for breeding the conditions I need, I suppose..."

You have a headache. It seems unfair; should you really have that even before you come down from this trip? "Shut. Up."

"Ah, I suppose I am rambling." Paper rustles, footsteps come closer. You're too tired to flinch when a hand brushes across your forehead...but at least the coolness drives the pain away for a second. "The list is on your desk, Ray. Everything should be easy for you to find."

You almost ask what list he's talking about, but then you realize that you don't really give a shit and you're halfway to slipping into sleep anyway. Easier to not carry on talking to yourself and just...let shit happen.

* * *

The shit that happens is, apparently, ten hours of dreamless sleep that leaves you feeling significantly less hopeless than usual. You don't even miss a class waking up late, thanks to the stellar planning that had you taking drugs on Saturday afternoon rather than any less opportune moment. Someone (probably Hayley's goth girlfriend) even put your laundry in the dryer.

Things never go this well all at once. You feel like you should be suspicious, but...no. It's fine. Everything is fine, for real this time. More than fine, if you can get the paper you have due finished in time, which you definitely will.

It's only when you go to get your laptop and transfer the handwritten paper from your notebook to something that can be sent in that you find the single sheet ripped from the notebook and left centered on your desk. The elegant copperplate handwriting isn't anything you're capable of, and the pen it was written in isn't one you own—you don't even know where you'd get one with lime-green ink.

The combination isn't very readable, either. You spend way too long puzzling each item out, feeling your heart sink back to normal levels as you read them. Sure, this doesn't look like it's something you made, but you had to have. God knows you've thought about this often enough.

(Well, other than the used motor oil. You have no idea what the fuck's up with that.)

But...no. Yeah, no. You won't be filling out this shopping list—just crumpling it into a ball and carrying it out of your room and to the kitchen, shoving it in the trash there and then pulling the bag out to knot it and take it outside even though it's definitely not your week to deal with that. Just in case.

(You also don't think about in case of what.)

* * *

You last a week and then break into the box again, and then you last twelve days, and then you last three days because you're failing a class that you need to pass if you don't want to die obscurely in a ditch (thanks, dad; does he know how nice that sounds right about now?) The man with no face doesn't show up any of those times; you just lie on your bed or on the floor with earbuds firmly in place, watching colors spiral out with every beat of the music until you fall asleep. If you had to guess, you'd say that he's just...the result of not giving your brain stimuli to make something out of. As long as you have music, he'll stay in whatever corner of your brain he came from in the first place, safely locked up in your subconscious.

It's fine. Nothing's weird, everything's fine, you're not getting wasted on the weekends or spending what little disposable cash you have on weed or whatever else your mom's terrified you'll get hooked on, it's fine. You are fine. Even with the phone call that escalates to a shouting match that ends with you calmly saying you're going to hang up and then doing exactly that even though you know it's going to have repercussions, you're...fine.

It's a good thing that you're apparently not able to overdose on whatever the hell is in the tablets (for some reason, you believe your hallucination's claim that it's not actually acid) because the only way you keep convincing yourself that you're fine is to not bother counting how many you take after that little conversation. It's enough that everything just sort of dissolves into colour and sensation and absolutely no thoughts or emotions at all, for what seems like it might as well be forever.

The first thing that intrudes on that sticky dream-state is your name, spoken patiently.

"Ray."

No. Nope. You're not ready yet. Just a bit longer...

"No longer—I've waited quite long enough. Look at me, Ray." A strong hand grips your chin and tilts your head—you're standing up, aren't you? When did that happen? "Look at me."

You don't want to do that, but you blink and things slide into focus. His face is still a pale, unfathomable blur, but everything else is bright and sharp—the stupid submarine shower curtain so much so that it burns your eyes. Why the hell are you in the bathroom? 

"We don't want to leave a mess for your housemate, of course. It's only polite to keep the ritual confined to somewhere that's easily cleaned."

"...ritual?" Shit. His voice may be clear and crisp, but the one word you manage to get out is so slurred that it scares you.

"The reason I'm here, Ray." You can't see it, but he's smiling. He lets go of your chin to reach into his suit coat and pull out the little tin that should be tucked into the drawer between your shirts. "Open your mouth."

"I...no—"

"Open. Your. Mouth."

You can't argue with how he says it. You can't. There's no way. You open your mouth, and cool fingers place another pill on your tongue.

Fuck.

"Excellent," he says, laying the tin on the counter and putting a hand on your shoulder. "Step over here, please."

Saying no isn't an option anymore, apparently. Not that you don't want to...but no. You let yourself be led to the tub, and you stand there in front of it when he lets you go and leaves you for a moment.

Somehow, the sight of the thick black liquid covering the bottom of the tub brings up dread rather than surprise. Sure, you know you didn't track down anything on the list he left you...but that doesn't seem to have stopped him from finding them himself. That'd sound stupid if you still believed that he's a hallucination, an aspect of your subconscious, but—

No. He's something else. Something much worse.

"Much more powerful," he corrects you, stepping to your side again. "Now. Hold out your arms, Ray."

No. _No._ You can see what's in his hand, small as it is, and you know what's about to happen. You _can't_. You can't take that pain. 

"Shush. It won't hurt."

That's worse.

"Hold out your arms," he says again, and god help you but you obey, and the pale man with no face sets the edge of the razor blade against the base of your thumb, and you close your eyes before you see blood.

And there is blood. He lied—it does hurt, something between a stinging and a burning. Not as much as it should, no, but you think that's the synthestesia from the fucking acid kicking in again—you see the pain behind your closed eyelids, red blooming against the black like blood in water. Like the blood you can hear dripping from your fingertips into the oil-covered tub, as the man with no face moves to your other arm.

"I have a name, you know," he says mildly. "And you should know it by now."

He's wrong—no, he's not. You do know it, and you know that he wants you to say it. If you can hold out a couple more minutes until you physically can't say it, at least he won't get what he wants.

"Don't be stubborn." Another order; the next three words are even more obviously compelling. "Say my name."

"Scratch." It's clear and sharp in your mouth, foul and tinged with copper. "Doctor Scratch."

He inhales. You realize that it's the first time you've heard him breathe at all, and the shock of that makes you open your eyes. It's harder to do than you thought it would be.

Scratch looks the same as before, but for the black and red smears across his white suit. He's smiling; you can feel the sharpness of his teeth, the victory on his unfocused face. "Good boy, Ray. Here."

You close your eyes as he closes your hand around something smooth and perfectly round, a little bigger than a tennis ball and a lot heavier. You can't hold it yourself, of course—there's something wrong with your fingers, with your hands, with your body. You don't know how you're even standing.

"Magic," Scratch says, letting go of your hand. "Which I need to take back now. Give my regards to the Speaker to the Dead."

You can't even begin to wonder what that means before he's gone. Just...gone, and with him goes whatever force was keeping you upright—you go limp, something shattering on the floor with the distant sound of shattering glass as your hand goes slack and you collapse.

**Oh, mother _fucker_.**

It's a weird thought to have, but you don't have time to realize that. You're already gone.


	2. Chapter 2

At least, you think you’re gone, as much as you can think. You’re gone, you’re dead, you killed yourself (at least that’s what they’ll think) and it’s over. It’s over. Everything is over…

And then you gasp and twist in whatever the hell is tangling you up, trying to grab for the deep slashes running from your wrists to the crook of your elbows before you even really realize that you’re still alive. Your skin’s dry—why is it dry? Why doesn’t it hurt? Why can’t you find the cuts, why—

“Hey, hey, no—here, stop, you’re okay—” 

Yeah, no, you’re not okay. Having someone pin your wrists down isn’t really helping, either, but opening your eyes to see a teenager with absolutely the worst dye job you’ve ever seen does fuck up your equilibrium enough that you stop struggling. You can’t believe that someone would desecrate hair that soft and curly with those shades of orange and green. It’s more than awful, it’s…

It matches the kid’s eyes, actually. That’s...huh. You don’t think eyes are supposed to be like that. 

They blink, after a moment, slowly letting go of your wrists. “Hey there.” 

“Uh. Hey.” You shake your head and look away from those weird two-tone eyes, down at the original reason for panic—your arms. The skin’s unbroken, sure, but...you didn’t hallucinate what happened. A hallucination wouldn’t leave thick pale scars, identically mirrored on both arms. “That’s...no. That’s not right. How long—” 

“Maybe two days.” The kid leans back, bringing long legs up to sit cross-legged on the bed beside you. (This isn’t your bed. This isn’t your room either, come to think of it.) “Like, you should’ve woke up, like, right after Karkat fixed you? But shit’s fucked, maybe because Scratch meant it to be and maybe because you’re some kind of weird psychic thing. I’m Davepeta by the way. Do you need a minute before I go get somebody?” 

“I…” Honestly, you really want to just sit here for a couple hours and maybe have a couple breakdowns, but then again… “I think I need an adult.” 

**You’re not going to get anyone more competent than they are around here.**

Okay, so that’s familiar and you don’t like it. You don’t really want to turn to see whose voice it actually is, but...realistically, you don’t have a choice.

The man standing there...he's not human. For a moment you think he's some new hallucination—things are already so goddamn weird, you're willing to accept a skull-faced grim reaper with writhing dreadlocks the color of bone and eyes filled with cold violet radiance as your overstressed brain's newest way of coping—but then Davepeta growls at him.

Actually growls. It makes you think of an angry cat. "Kurloz. Dial it down."

**Kid, this douche just woke up my motherfucking boss from hell, I have a right to be on edge.**

"No!" They follow that up with a hiss. It's even more feline than the growl; you have to blink to be sure you're not imagining the sharp teeth. Blinking just makes it worse, though, because that adds cat ears nestled in their hair, and...wings. Wings? Alright, you're covering your eyes now. No more. "He almost furreaking _died_ and you're _not_ going to bully him for it, you creepy fucker—"

The door opens. Davepeta shuts up; the next voice is like theirs but...not. You know this isn't a great explanation, but you are very fucking distressed right now. "Kurloz. Out."

**Strider—**

" _Now._ " It's the same voice, but there's the feel of a different speaker somehow. You feel Kurloz go the same way you felt Scratch leave you in the bathroom; the memory pushes panic up into your throat, so strong that you flinch when another weight joins Davepeta's on the bed. "Hey, easy. No one's gonna hurt you...can you look at me?"

Maybe if you hadn't looked at _him_ , everything would have been fine. Maybe. "Fuck no."

"Alright. That's alright. I'm gonna touch you, okay?"

"I—I don't—"

"Just for a minute. One second, man." And it really is a second; his hand slides across the side of your face, brushing against the hand you have pressed to your eyes and through your hair, and then it's gone. "Fuck. You're _shattered._ "

"No shit he's shattered, Karkat had to ask me for help." There's yet another new note in Davepeta's voice—not as feline, but definitely just as displeased. "Don't tell him what's wrong with him like that, you ass—you're an empath, can't you read what to say?"

"Davepeta, I can't even read his name, cut me some slack."

"Ray." Oh. Neat. You can still talk. Why exactly are you talking again? "Ray Silva."

"Ray. Okay. I'm Dave, alright? Nobody's gonna hurt you here—"

Oh, that's funny. It's not going to hurt, sure. Nothing's going to hurt. You're just going to...you're...

"Oh, god." There's colors in the blackness behind your eyelids; the pain from how much pressure you're putting into the contact of your palms and your face spikes stronger when you hear yourself speak. "Don't, please, don't—"

**Move.** The voice in your head again, the thoughts that aren't your thoughts. It isn't what Scratch did to command you, but you still flinch away as Dave does as he's told, moves away from you, gets out of the way—you can't. You can't let yourself be defenseless. You can't move, you can't, you—

**Shh.** Fingertips brush against the tiny bit of your forehead that your hands don't cover; your breath catches and then evens out despite yourself as the black and starbursts of painful color flare into pure purple. **Coulda told them we'd have to do this to get anyfuckingwhere. Take your hands down, lil' bro. Let's see that face.**

It sounds like a suggestion, but you find yourself taking it as a command—your hands fall away from your eyes, palms-up on the sheets to show the scars. You look at them for half a second and then Kurloz puts a dark-skinned hand tattooed with the shapes of the bones beneath under your chin, making you look away.

**Looking at it won't make it easier to handle, lil' bro.**

"Be careful with him." That's Dave—holy shit he looks almost exactly like Davepeta, minus the weird hair and the...fursona stuff. Honestly, he looks too pale to be human either, but you feel like that's racist. Or something. "Like, I get that you're pissed—dunno how I could not know that, you're damn near projecting it at me at this point—"

**Am I supposed to apologize?**

"No, just don't be a dick to the poor guy. He's as much a victim as you are."

Kurloz's head tilts; you really wish you could close your eyes and not see the way his dreadlocks shift in a direction that can't be accounted for by gravity. **...no. More of one—that motherfucker knows better than to come to me for anything other than a fight.**

"Exactly, so chill." Davepeta makes a face and shifts their weight back, planting a bare foot on Kurloz's chest and pushing. The...creepy whatever-he-is—

**Demon. Speaker to the Dead.**

—okay you're not even going to try to process either of those titles, but he lets himself be moved back even though he's got a good four inches over the kid on the bed. Said kid makes a sound you tentatively identify as purring, when Kurloz moves back, and crawls up to curl up next to you, wings folding down and (somehow) out of sight as their tail curls loosely around your wrist.

Huh. You...thought maybe that was just some kind of fancy furry accessory, but...yeah, maybe not. There's no way they make prosthetics this convincing; it's warm when you automatically stroke it, the muscles under the fur shifting at your touch.

"Hey, uh. What the _fuck_?"

Dave shrugs, one hand coming up to shove his hair out of his face as his eyes go glassy for a second. "Davepeta's never actually kept someone's life pent up during healing before—you're kinda stuck with the clingy shit until they're totally sure you're not gonna up and die on us, sorry."

"They—what?" Okay, so...what? This kid is the reason you're not dead? "I meant the, the tail what the fuck, why the fuck do they—"

**Can I just put him to sleep already.**

"I don't want to go to sleep." Too much like what happened in the bathroom. Too easy to remember that.

**I can fix that. You want to forget?**

"Kurloz, you're gonna cause a new kind of shitshow for the poor guy. He's some kind of psychic, remember?"

**Give me some motherfucking credit, shit.** Kurloz startles you by making a sound—it's just a derisive snort, sure, but it's the first actually audible sound you've heard from him. Somehow you assumed he communicated purely through the weird thought transfer, which is...not something you ever saw yourself thinking. You're taking all of this way too well. **Kankri's done it to you before—he already wants to forget the worst shit. Not like I can scoop out the whole mess, but even losing a lil' bit of the trauma'll help.**

Dave looks extremely doubtful. That'd be worrying if you weren't stuck on the idea that maybe you don't have to remember—

**Shhhhh. Don't look there.**

Kurloz leans down and gets ahold of your chin again, tipping your head back so you're forced to look him in the eyes. They're purple, bright purple, deep luminous consuming purple; you guess you didn't need to fear the sleep he'd give you after all. This isn't anything like the darkness you were left in before, even if it is just as blank.

* * *

You wake up with a headache that feels like it's already fading, and with Davepeta still curled beside you. They look asleep, face buried in a pillow and back rising and falling with their steady breathing.

Fuck. When was the last time you were willingly so physically so close to someone? Hayley's aggressive flirtation doesn't count; you spend every moment she's touching you trying to plan the best way to have that stop, and it's different from this, anyway. You're not even touching Davepeta right now, and they're not touching you—close enough that you can feel how warm they are, more than a normal person, but not _quite_ touching.

It's...nice. It's nice. You feel like a creep for thinking that having a weird cat-bird-furry teenager lying next to you is nice, but that doesn't stop it from making you feel better.

You still need to move, though. You can only sort of feel the arm you're laying on. If you do it slow enough, you should be able to get up off the other side of the bed, right?

...no, apparently. The moment you go to push yourself up, Davepeta's feline ears perk up out of their hair, and they raise their head to fix you with clear two-tone eyes. "Hey."

"...hey." Fuck it, you're still getting up. Might as well see if you can, if nothing else. Davepeta rolls up to sit on their side of the bed, cocking their head as you cautiously get to your feet. Hey, nothing hurts. "Are you babysitting me, then?"

"I don't think I'm old enough for that." You were joking; Davepeta's answer sounds serious. They shrug, then stretch, wings unfolding and spreading for a moment to mirror the movement of their arms. It's funny; you've seen a lot of art of winged humans (a side effect of being raised religious) but you don't think you've ever seen a depiction so...natural. Their wings are the same orange and green as their hair, clashing horribly with the purple flannel and jeans they're wearing, sure, but the anatomy still just looks right, somehow. "You gotta eat if you're up, by the way. I'll get you something if you don't want to talk to anyone—well, Seb's probably the one who'll get it for you, I'm keeping an eye on you—"

"I thought you weren't babysitting me?" Yeah, you deserve the face they make at you for that crack. "Uh...would it be a good idea to not talk to anyone, though?"

Davepeta frowns, chewing on their lower lip for a moment as they think that over. Funny—you'd swear that their teeth were cat-sharp before, but now they just look normal. "I mean. You have to eventually, yeah. I don't think we can just take you home and have all your shit go back to normal, y'know?"

Ah. Shit. "They think I tried to kill myself." Shit. Shit, shit...shit. Your parents are going to know. Shit.

But Davepeta's shaking their head. "No, we did a little...creative cleaning. Roxy wanted to set the place on fire, but that was a lil' more than D thought they could get away with. Rose came up with a spell to cleanse where he did that, though—the great thing is that there was enough blood and residual magic to power it, too? It was rad, dude."

For a moment you try to imagine any scenario set in that bloody room that you would consider even close to rad. You fail miserably. "If you say so. But I'm still...missing, right?"

"...sort of? I mean, I think Dirk and Hal came up with a cover story about an undergrad program or a job offer or something. I was, uh...lil' bit distracted when they were talking about that."

"By bringing me back to life, huh?"

Davepeta's nose wrinkles up and their shoulders hunch defensively; god, maybe you guessed a little high on their age before. As tall as they are and as confident as they sound, they look...really, really young right now. "I can't do that. I can—with you I just didn't let you die, I'd never done that before and it was harder than moving life into something that's dead. I thought—it was hard, I didn't know if it'd work until Karkat said he was done."

Ah. Shit. "Are you okay?" Inadequate, sure, but it's all you can think to ask. You've never been around someone this recently traumatized before, especially not when it's sort of your fault.

"Eh. Gotta talk to Rose about it, but later." The kid shrugs and shakes their head, ears flattening slightly with the movement. "Let's just get you fed right now, yeah?"

"If you say so. Lead the way, Davepeta."

* * *

The architecture of this house is...weird. You're not really sure how to explain it—the most obvious example is when Davepeta opens a door into a corridor with darkly stained hardwood floors and lit only by candlelight, then groans and shuts it again for a moment only to open it to a messy living room instead, but there's something else about this place. It feels...well, weird.

Very scientific. It feels weird. Then again, you guess that's better than admitting to yourself that it feels like there's someone else here besides you and Davepeta. Maybe several someones. God, if they'd just say something at least you'd have some kind of proof...no, you're definitely losing it.

That's fine. You can deal with that, honestly. Not like you didn't see it coming.

At least the kitchen's decently normal. Too large, with a counter island roughly the size of the entire kitchen in any house you've ever been in, but this house is...well, you'll just say spacious. You'd like to see the outside at some point. Wait, that reminds you of a question you need to ask, and you guess you can ask Davepeta even if it's kind of rude to not introduce yourself to the man seated at a stool by the counter.

"Hey, where exactly is this?"

"The safehouse." Unhelpful, but you guess you weren't very clear with your question, and anyway Davepeta seems to be pausing specifically to open a cabinet, scan the contents, and open another one. "I think the closest town anyone's heard of is Bryan—"

"Kansas?" How the fuck did they get your unconscious ass to Kansas.

"No, Texas." Davepeta shrugs and opens another cabinet as if they didn't just add a few states to the distance you were moved after almost dying. "I'm kind of thinking Liv ate the pop tarts—you want some soup?"

"...sure." There's at least eight cabinets open now. You sigh and look over at the man seated on the stool, resisting the urge to wince when you get a good look at the network of scars around his dark eyes. "Are they always like this?"

For a second you don't get an answer other than his eyes flicking to you and then away again; then Davepeta turns around with a can in their hand and a puzzled look on their face. "Who're you talking to?"

"I—" You're not high. You are not high, you're not tripping, there's no reason to feel that flash of dread as you gesture at the man sitting there. "Him? Do you not see him? God, please tell me you see him..."

"Oh, they do." Again, you have to resist an automatic instinct as the man rises to his feet; this time it's to take a step away. He's a good six inches taller than you, and his scarred face only gets more intimidating when he runs a hand through his dark hair to push it back. "Not sure why you can, though. Call me Griffin."

"Ray." You don't really think about it, when he holds out his hand. The polite thing to do is obviously to take it.

Mistake.

It hurts, first off. Not through the contact—touching Griffin's hand, pressing your palm to his feels like _nothing_ , barely even the expected pressure—but in your head. In your eyes, a blinding pain that's so sharp and brutal that it blocks out all other senses.

You're blind. There's blood in your mouth and you're on your back on the floor, twitching out the last few seconds of your life before he takes your body somewhere no one will ever find it. The worst pain's in your eyes but everything hurts, everything north of your lower back hurts, and below that's numb because that fucker, that _fucker_ , that FUCKER—

All that in half a second, and then your body follows through with its automatic reaction and you jerk back, breaking contact. You still can't see, or at least you don't think you can; you're dizzy, disoriented, and so god damn confused.

Davepeta grabs your arm when you stumble back. You know it's them even before they get the yowled, "Griffin, what the _fuck_!" out; their nails are long enough to bite into your skin through the borrowed shirt. Their touch carries something, too—a fresh taste of blood, a sense of guilt and sorrow and sweet happy excitement at...at...

"Here," and that's another voice, deep and calm. How many people even live here? "Let me see him."

You don't know what you expect...but it's not for Davepeta to let go near-immediately, and it's definitely not for whoever this is to simply pick you up and sit you down somewhere. Maybe a stool, but it feels more stable than that. The counter?

God, you can't see. You still can't see.

Then there's a gentle, brief touch on the side of your face, and as soon as you recover from flinching back the newest voice says, "Open your eyes."

Oh. Shit. Yeah.

You open your eyes and realize that the newest arrival is...well, the first word that comes to mind is _big_ ; the hand in your shoulder could wrap around your neck and snap your spine like a raw spaghetti noodle, you think. He has long black hair caught in a ponytail, pulled back from a face that's just a few shades darker than what you think is possible for just a tan, and he's wearing a god damn rainbow print Hawaiian shirt.

That's not really helping your equilibrium, if you're being honest. "Uh..."

"His name's Grey," Davepeta offers helpfully, looping their arms over the big man's shoulders and hauling themselves up like they're climbing a tree. He doesn't even shift his weight for stability. Your brain is trying to throw up comparisons to Tolkien and Lewis, to beings huge and not quite human—and with that thought, the idea of black feathers and night skies washes through your mind, making you flinch and the kid's eyes widen. "Ray?"

"Don't worry about it." That's automatic. You should probably not be saying that right now. You look over to the side, checking if Griffin's still visible; he is, standing by the counter with his arms crossed and an interested look on his face. That's just...that's just great. "You're...dead."

"Bingo."

"You're dead." Wonderful. You're not even on drugs.

"Got it in one."

"You're—"

"Which ghost is it?" Grey asks before you can say it a third time, which of course instantly distracts you with the implication that there's more than one here. Why is there more than one here! Isn't one ghost enough for any reasonable building?

"Griffin." The fact that Davepeta answers—and does it calmly, casually even—throws you off again. They've somehow managed to climb all the way to perch on Grey's shoulders, petting his hair with one hand as their tail twists behind them for balance. "Don't know why the furrick he thought he needed to shake hands with the baby psychic—"

"It's polite, Jesus fuck." The ghost (or whatever he is) grimaces and reaches up to rub at the edge of the scarring across his face, massaging the skin like it hurts. "You know people don't see me. Don't talk without being introduced, either."

You should...apologize? "I didn't know you were..."

"Dead?"

"Exactly. That."

"Yeah. Couple decades now, don't worry about it." Griffin shrugs, a one-sided motion that's accompanied by a smile that's just as lopsided. "Aren't you kind of old to be surprised by this shit, kid?"

"He's not a hunter," Davepeta says. "Just some poor asshole that Scratch picked out for something."

"What?" Griffin's eyes widen. You're closer now, in a better position to get a look at them; the irises are blue, rather than the brown or black you expected. You didn't know that blue came so dark in people's eyes. "He's dead. Dave and Karkat killed him back when they killed _my_ bastard."

God, you feel like you're working with maybe three cards out of the deck here. "Yours?"

"Vengeance keeps me here." Griffin shrugs again. "Hell, if that bastard hadn't parceled my body out for easy disposal, I'd probably be a fuckin' revenant. Hell of a lot easier to kill me for good that way, actually."

Four cards. Sort of. No, actually, that didn't tell you anything. You should have just gone back to sleep.

"Back off for a sec, Grey." Davepeta somehow slithers down from their spot on Grey's shoulders—you don't have the faintest clue how they pull it off—and steps over to the fridge. You notice that they don't brush against Griffin at all; is that purposeful or just a coincidence? "Oh, and order another pizza? Roxy'll kick my ass if there's not some for them when they get home..."

"Only if you let her."

"Well yeah, I can't just not do that, right?" Davepeta's back is to you, but you've been around enough slightly-younger cousins to know the rolled eyes that go with that tone. "You want microwaved pizza or cold?"

"Cold." It's faster. You take the slice they hand you, realize that you really need to eat at least a bite before you ask the question you want to get answered...and end up making the whole god damn triangle disappear with a speed that vaguely disconcerts you. Not enough to refuse the second slice that Davepeta's already holding out, though. "...when can I go home?"

Davepeta looks at Grey. You guess that makes sense—they're obviously not an adult, and he just as obviously is—but the pause before he answers still makes you nervous. "Home as in..."

"College." But you're probably going to fail. Three days doesn't sound like a lot, but...yeah. You're going to fail at least one class. You're going to drop out. Shit. "Probably college."

"Ah. Can you take a few more days here?"

"Uh..."

"You'll be reimbursed."

Wait, what? "Reimbursed how?"

Grey frowns slightly. It's a thoughtful look, not an angry one, but you'd still take at least a couple steps back if you weren't sitting on a kitchen counter. "Well. Dirk has the itemized list, but I think 'monetarily' covers it fairly well."

"That's—yeah. As long as it's enough to get me home."

"I think he's done more along the lines of depositing enough to pay for the next few semesters at least, but we'll be sure to get you home safely."

The next few semesters. That's...holy shit. They wouldn't really do that, right? It's a trick. Some kind of gimmick to get you to...to get you to do something. "I...why do you want me here?"

"Three reasons." Grey sighs and takes a step back (thank fuck.) "One, Kurloz is going to go through your mind to see if Scratch left anything. You don't actually have a choice about that happening; we're just trying to make sure he does it where Dave can monitor your mental state during the process."

You don't really like how that sounds, but then again it's your own fault for getting high and apparently raising someone from the dead. "Uh...yeah. Okay. Sure."

"Good. Two, Roxy and Dirk need to put you through some tests and see just how powerful of a medium you are. Talents that have to be triggered can turn out to be dangerous both for the person who has them and anyone around, and we'll need to see if you'll need a few binding tattoos to be able to safely handle them."

Well, none of that makes sense. "Sure. Why not. You said there were three?"

Grey sighs again, offering you a wry smile. "Jake could use some help sorting out some artifacts Rose seized from someone who was stupid enough to try to sell her the products of graverobbing. It's easier to return the ones that aren't reproductions if you can talk to the spirits associated with them, after all."

So...they want you to talk to dead people. God, your life is just completely off the rails at this point, huh? You’ve been thrown off enough times that there’s no more rails to be had. "Nothing else is going to kill me, right?"

"I'd get it first." Davepeta says it like they're deadly serious, which seems weird coming from a teenager dressed like they've just left a circus troupe.

"If anything even comes close, you get hazard pay," Grey adds. Like Davepeta's statement, that comes out believable. It doesn't make it any less weird, unfortunately.

But. You're broke, you're not entirely sure this isn't some kind of weird hallucinatory side effect of almost dying, and you honestly don't give a shit about the worst that could happen here, so...yeah. At the end of the day, your decision making capabilities boil down to _why not?_

"Sounds great. When do I start?"


	3. Chapter 3

They send you home a week later. Kurloz gets you to the right state and at least close to the right town in a process that involves...uh. Magic, you guess. You're just going to say that magic's definitely a thing in your life now; the alternative would be dealing with the fact that your head's way more fucked up then it feels like it is. 

Which it might be..but you feel better than you have since...what, third grade? Fourth? 

"That's depressing," Griffin notes. You look over to the passenger seat of the truck that's (apparently) yours for the moment at least, and see that he's sprawled out there with a knife in his hand, polishing the blade. 

"Are you still here?" 

"Eyes on the road, kid." Shit. He has a point there. Griffin probably sees the flash of panic on your face before you turn away, because he snorts out a laugh at it. "Guess you don't want to die anymore, huh?" 

"Who says I ever did?" You think you missed your exit. This is what you get for not using the voiceover on the GPS. 

"The scars got a lot to say abou it." 

"I didn't do that."

"Oh, I know. But that was supposed to be the cover, right?" Out of the corner of your eye you see the ghost straighten up, light flashing on the knife as he gestures with it. "The bastard's evil, not stupid—an obvious murder gets the cops focused and the hunters maybe not so much, makes a mess that muddies up the message he's sending—" 

"The bastard as in Scratch, right?" 

"Kid, your reaction time is _absolute_ shit." 

"Yeah, well. I'm trying to drive." 

"Still." He leans across to nudge the steering wheel slightly, edging the truck into the right lane. "This one's the exit, by the way." 

Oh. So it is. "Is this what you're here for? To be some kind of...I don't know, freaky backseat driver?" 

Another snorted laugh. "Right now I'm in the front seat." 

"You know what I mean." 

"Uh-huh. Doesn't mean I can't be a dick about it though." 

And there's silence, for a couple miles. You wonder if you can turn the radio on. Then again, you don't know any decent stations and your thumb drive of music's still...well, back in your room. On your dresser. Presumably right next to the little tin box, unless someone's taken it. 

You almost hope someone has. It'd mean that you wouldn't have to be worrying about what you're going to do with those. 

"Eh, I think you're fine." 

Griffin again. You know you shouldn't look over, and you do anyway, and he grins at you when you do. "Why are you here, exactly?" 

"Can't move on until I take revenge on the son of a bitch that killed me, and his kid took care of him _years_ ago. But seriously, Ray, you're fine. That shit won't draw him back to you." 

Him. Scratch. Griffin obviously doesn't want to use his name, and the thought of saying it again yourself...well, you think at this point you can just admit it. The idea scares you. _He_ scares you. 

"You don't know that." It slips out, and more words come right behind it. "He didn't—nothing ever happened to me. Not like this. Nothing weird ever happened until I took those stupid—if I'd just, just not opened the box—" 

"Kid." 

"—everything would still be fine, I'd be—" 

"Ray." 

"—procrastinating a paper or—" 

" _Ray._ " 

You don't flinch when Griffin puts a hand on your shoulder, mostly because you're already too tense for that. You feel like there'll be marks on the rubber cover over the steering wheel when you let go. _If_ you let go. You do stop talking, though, which might be what he was really going for. 

"Rox ran a blood test on you," he says in the engine-filled silence. "Maryam _tasted_ it, just to make sure. All that was there was hallucinogens—don't know what type exactly, but it showed up nice and bright to the test and to the vampire. Nothing that'd summon a dead fuckin' demigod." 

"You don't—" 

"If all he needed was for a depressed kid to take drugs, he wouldn't have stayed dead half as long as he did." Griffin's hand leaves your shoulder as he leans back in his seat with a tired sigh. "Bastard used you, now he's done with you. Simple." 

"Simple," you echo. "He tried to kill me." 

"You almost died," Griffin says, in a tone that suggests that he's patiently explaining something to a toddler. "Ain't the same as trying to kill you. He gave you one of the cueball-lookin' things—the Striders have a few, but theirs are just for getting back and forth to that pocket dimension Dave inherited. The one you had was a summons." 

"A summons?" Repeating things seems to be working okay. You don't have to think as much about it, anyway.

"Yeah. Pulled Kurloz right out of a lesson with the kids when it broke—I've never seen him change so fast, you know? If I wasn't dead I think I would've missed it." 

"Are you saying the...weird skull-tattoo look is how he looks as a _human_?" You try to imagine anything more demonic than that, and find that you really can't. 

And then Griffin says, "Yeah," and suddenly you can. Sort of. It's not so much visualizing something as _seeing_ it, an image of a dark _thing_ with limbs stretched too long and bent in ways that resemble no living creature you've ever seen, a thing with writhing tendrils the color of bone spreading out along its shoulders. All that, superimposed over the dash and the windshield and the road. 

"Shit!" The vision clears as soon as you spit the word out, and you're weirdly relieved to see that the truck's barely strayed towards the dashed white line in that half-second or so. Wait—maybe the weird aspect of that emotion is how surprised you are that you care. "Don't do that. Not when I'm driving." 

"Do wh—" Griffin stops. You feel like he's going to be looking right at you if you turn your head to check; you tell yourself that the only reason you don't look is because you need to keep your eyes on the road. Honestly, it's probably got more to do with not wanting to see if there's pity on his face. He's got to be thinking you're crazy. _You_ think you're crazy—did you really accuse him of planting a thought in your head? God, what if you did that to someone else? Anyone who's not dead would have a whole lot of questions, and messing up the wrong one...well, it'd be bad. Rubber room bad, the kind of bad that—

"Jesus, kid, calm down." 

"How do you—" 

"Guess I shouldn't have shook your hand back at the safehouse." You glance over in time to catch the tail end of a sheepish shrug, and an equally sheepish look on its way off Griffin's face. "You get flashes from me, I get flashes from you. Side effect of being a medium and having a ghost hang around, I guess." 

Oh. Right. Because you're a medium now. You talk to ghosts. That's a thing. 

Griffin points wordlessly at the next turn. Once you're safely past it and on the right road, you tell him, "I sort of think being a medium is going to suck." 

The bark of laughter that surprises out of him sounds honest. "Damn, kid, I think you just summed up what it takes every baby mage ever a couple weeks at least to learn." 

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" 

"Nah, not really." 

"Good. It doesn't." You have no idea if the parking card Kurloz put in the window of this truck is going to actually be valid, but you pull to a stop in front of the house anyway. The worst that'll happen is it gets towed, and all that'll do is put you back where you started in terms of transportation. "Come on—I need you to tell me how to convince Jason that I didn't try to kill myself." 

"Hey, all I got to say about that is good fucking luck." 

"...screw you."

* * *

Well, the door's locked. Weird—you're usually the only one who bothers to lock up properly. Maybe something about your apparent suicide attempt rattled Jason enough that he gives a shit about security. Not that it matters right now—your key's still in your pocket even though it's a different pair of pants than you left with, and it works just fine. 

Griffin's not with you when you turn around from relocking the door behind yourself. For a second you think about unlocking it and leaving it that way for him; then you groan and smack yourself in the forehead with the heel of your hand. Right. Leave the door unlocked for a ghost. That makes _perfect_ sense. 

Deciding whether to check out the bathroom gives you a bit of a longer pause. On the one hand...you're curious. You are curious. On the other...

Well. Again, you guess you're scared. You should probably address that...but no, no thanks. Not right now. Instead, you head for your room. Specifically your bed. Hey, someone's put fresh sheets on it—unexpected, but in a good way. You honestly can't remember if they were clean when you, uh, left, and this means that falling face-down onto the mattress is almost wholly pleasant. 

...shit. There's probably a couple dozen things you should be doing right now, but suddenly you're just _tired_. It's not the kind of exhaustion that blurs into actual physical pain, but you still can't move. Or don't want to move, maybe...can you just stay here? For a while, at least? You don't know what day it is, what classes you're missing, but does it matter? Does it really matter? It's already been a week, so...

"So I'm fucked anyway." The sound of your own voice startles you—how do you even sound that calm. "It doesn't matter what I do now, because I'm fucked either way." 

"Talking to yourself?" 

Oh. _There's_ Griffin. You roll over to your side and see him standing by the dresser, shifting your things around piece by piece. "Where'd you go?" 

"Checking out the bathroom." Apparently Griffin was looking for the little tin of pills, and he's found it now; you watch as he opens it, selects a paper-wrapped tablet, and examines it closer than you ever bothered to. "Everything's cleaned up, in case you were wondering—Rox does a good job on that shit." 

"Oh." One more thing that you don't know how you're supposed to feel about. The idea that you could have died and left nothing that couldn't be cleaned up and disposed of in the space of a couple days...well. It's not a good feeling, but you don't know if it's a bad one either. That probably says something bad about you. "Is anybody else here?" 

"Some frat boy in the kitchen." 

"Jason." God, you should get up and talk to him. Let him know you're back, at least. But...

"But what?" 

"Just as a question, are you _intentionally_ reading my mind, or...?" 

"Right now? Yeah, it's on purpose. Not exactly easy getting it to happen, either. What's stopping you?" 

You thought he'd be at least a little ashamed about spying on your thoughts. Apparently not, though. Oh well. "I'm tired." Too tired to keep your eyes open, or at least that's what you'll tell him if he calls you out for closing them. "He's going to be...angry." 

"Why?" 

"Why?" 

"Yeah, why?" The mattress doesn't depress under Griffin's weight, but even with your eyes closed you can sense him coming over to sit on the edge of the bed. "Tell me why he's going to be angry, Ray." 

"He just is." But that's not the answer he wants and you know it, more by simple common sense than any weird ghost telepathy. You're supposed to be thinking about things. "Because I—you know. I screwed up." 

"Uh-huh. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't we operating off the idea that he thinks you tried to off yourself?" 

"Yeah. Exactly." 

"That's being sick, kid. Not screwing up." 

"That's not—" Not what your parents would say if they knew, except of course you can't exactly say that out loud. You're going to have to talk to them soon, now that you think of it. Well, unless your father's already decided to follow through on his promise that he'll cut you off if you don't answer his daily phone call. Which you already have. Which—

Wait, you're not screwed. Not immediately, anyway. Whatever the status of your actual life skills and collegiate career is, you have a standing job offer from...well, sure, it's from some weirdos in Texas, but a job offer is a job offer and they're _already_ paid you. They've already paid you better than you ever dreamed you'd be paid even if you _don't_ count the car, and what did you really do? Spent a couple hours sorting through books and dishes and weapons and putting the ones that felt weird in a separate pile? You could do that for as long as they'll pay you for it, and maybe find something else to do when they run out of possibly haunted stuff. 

"Ray." Griffin knocks on the top of the dresser; the sharp sound is enough to get you to look at him even if your name doesn't quite do it. "You okay?" 

Might as well be honest. "I think I'm having a midlife crisis at the totally wrong time, but yeah, I'm fine." 

"Good. Now come on—if you really can't talk to the frat boy I'll possess you and do it for you, but we still need to let him know you're here before he hears someone talking and calls the cops for a break-in." 

You...guess he has a point.

* * *

Miracle of miracles, Jason's washing the dishes. You stand in the door and watch him for a minute, waiting for the senseless and almost painful wave of guilt to pass—you weren't _here_ , you can't help it that you missed a couple of what're usually your tasks to do—and then clear your throat. "Uh. Hey." 

Jason drops the plate he's trying to scrub canned spaghetti sauce off of and turns around in one smooth motion while you're still cringing from the impact of ceramic on the metal of the sink. (You absolutely cannot believe that that didn't break.) "Oh shit—you're back." 

"...yeah. I'm back." No way are you volunteering any information right now. You do wonder what the weird look on his face is, though. 

"Are you okay?" That's...not really what you expected. Something more along the lines of _what the hell is wrong with you_ and maybe some sort-of-concealed disgust would be the rational response, you think, not...Jason leaning back against the counter and giving you the kind of concerned look that says he's looking for obvious injuries. "The cops said the guy who broke in kicked your ass." 

The cops. What cops? And while you're asking questions, what _guy_? What break in? Griffin must sense you're struggling, because he speaks up after barely a second. "Rox must've had a cover story. Just roll with it—tell him you don't remember anything. Bastard clocked you on the head, okay?" 

Oh. Okay, you can definitely pull off a straight-up lack of knowledge. "I...guess he did. As far as my memory's concerned, I got off the phone with my dad and then woke in the hospital like. A full day later with a headache and like five people shining lights in my eyes." 

It's a bad performance, to your ears. Fake, forced, not even close to believable. 

Incredibly, Jason winces in sympathy and nods. "Oh, yeah, concussions suck—I know a guy who cracked his skull halfway through a basketball game and spent two months in and out of surgery. No wonder you were gone so long." 

"I mean. I don't think he hit me hard enough to break anything." 

"Yeah, but still." Jason shrugs and gives you another careful look. You wonder if he's trying to work out exactly where the alleged head injury is. "Hey, hit me up if you get any aftereffects, yeah? I can drive you to the ER." 

Huh. You're not even sure how you're supposed to respond to that offer. "Uh...I'll be fine. I got a car."

"No shit? Don't tell me your parents finally sprung for that." 

Back to your parents again. You still don't feel up to facing that subject. "No. It's..sort of a signing bonus. For a job." 

Griffin groans. "Kid, you're _this_ close to getting in over your head." 

And he's probably right, because the look on Jason's face just shifted from mostly concerned to a little more interested, with maybe just a touch of disbelief. "Holy shit, dude. You still have like three semesters to go—is it a good deal?" 

"Better than bagging groceries." Okay, you can't actually get any more specific than this without getting into a corner you can't explain yourself out of. Luckily you've already thought of the magic words so you won't have to. "Look, they made me sign a nondisclosure agreement, I know it's just _you_ , but—" 

"No, yeah, if it's good enough that you get a car as a signing bonus you definitely don't want to risk fucking that one up." Jason nods, opening his mouth to say something else...and closing it again as your phone rings. 

Siren ringtone. That's your dad. 

Shit. 

"I have to take this," you tell him, and back out of the kitchen, heading for your room at a speed that's just short of obviously fleeing and just slow enough that the phone stops ringing as you shut your door behind yourself and sink back down onto your bed. You should just hit redial, get it over with, but...

_Shit._

"You did pretty damn good back there," Griffin says, phasing through the closed door as you stare at the phone in your hand. He'll call back, you know he will. "Especially for not planning shit out ahead of time. Takes talent to get out that easy." 

"Uh-huh." How long do you have? A minute? Five minutes? Ten? You _have_ to answer it—you've already missed so many of the daily calls, missing another one when you're physically present and conscious...it's unacceptable. You have to answer it. 

"Kid." 

"Yeah." 

"Ray." 

Oh. You're supposed to look up. When you do you find Griffin closer than expected, arms crossed and a mix of curiosity and concern on his face. "What?" 

"Who is it?" 

The immediate instinct is to claim that you don't know what he's talking about. Knowing your luck, that'd work for about a minute before he used another bit of supernatural insight or just common sense to call bullshit. "My parents. Probably my dad—I'm supposed to, uh, talk to him every day. He pays for...well, a lot of shit for me. I've missed a solid week." 

"Ah. And shit's gonna go down, huh?" 

"Yeah." You're an adult. You should be able to take the criticism that you know you're about to get—that you guess you deserve—but the thought of how _furious_ he's going to be scares you worse than ghosts and demons and all kinds of supernatural bullshit does. "I just...I don't know. I can't. Griffin, I can't do this."

The ghost frowns for a moment. Then he shakes his head and sits down beside you. "Want me to do it for you?" 

You haven't forgotten the shouting match that came out of the time Hayley got ahold of your phone before you did. The fact that she isn't your girlfriend, doesn't even _live_ here, made absolutely no difference on how many threats your father made. "Someone else answering doesn't end well, trust me." 

"Hey, if I possess you then how's he going to know the difference?" Griffin grins. It's wide and somehow predatory, and you understand why the job description is _hunter_ a little bit more now. "The tattoo Rox gave you isn't for me, you know—that's for forced shit, demons and ghosts." 

"I...really think you _are_ a ghost." 

"Different kind. Do you want me to smooth shit over with him, make sure he leaves you alone from now on, what?" 

"I don't know." Well, you do. It can't possibly be this easy, though, so you can't even think about asking. "I just...shit. Don't make me choose right now." 

"Kid, it's either you choose or you let me choose." 

"Fine, then you choose." In your hand, the phone's screen lights up; you tense in the half-second before the ringtone starts up. Griffin sees it, and holds out his hands to you. 

It's probably not a good thing that you take them with an almost physical sense of relief and no hesitation at all. Griffin's hands are intangible this time, melting right into yours, and you close your eyes as he pushes hard on your mind and drops you into a darkness that _has_ to be sleep.

* * *

It doesn't feel like sleep when you come out of it, though. If you wake up and find yourself fully vertical with your phone still in your hand, something's wrong; if you come out of a ghostly possession like that, it's normal. As normal as it can be, anyway. Still...

"What happened?" You don't _see_ Griffin, but it's not like he could have gone too far. 

And sure enough, his voice comes from right behind you. Not that you're ready to turn around yet. "Well, he says he's not paying your tuition anymore. Or your phone bill." 

" _Shit._ " D promised you he'd taken care of the first one for a while at least, and you believe him—if he hasn't, you guess you'll move on to the hazy plan of driving back to Texas—but your phone's different. You're not even sure what day it is—does the month of prepaid data you're on expire today, next week, what? Are you going to have enough time and money on hand to get another card and load it again before the month rolls over? Can you even do that with the plan he has you on? You might have to get a new phone altogether—can you afford _that_?

"Ray. Hey." Griffin taps your shoulder for attention; you look back and see that yes, he's there, if a little less solid than before. You can see the bed through him, just barely. "I already called Rox—they're taking care of it. Hell, you'll probably have better service than before; can't get much better than the network the kids set up for the hunters." 

"...oh." You owe them more now, you guess. Then again, you already owed them your actual life. "So he's done." 

"He damn well better be," Griffin growls out with an anger that startles you a little. "That's another thing I set Rox on—you can call him if you really think you got to, but he can't call you. Manipulative bastard." 

_Manipulative._ Huh. It's sort of weird having your vague feeling that he's been pushing you into most of your life choices ever since you can remember confirmed from someone else on the strength of one conversation. Not totally pleasant, but a lot better than most of the experiences you've had lately. "I don't think that's going to stop him from driving up here to find out what the hell's wrong with me, honestly." 

Griffin flashes you that grim smile again. "Then we'll see how he likes handling me instead, kid. Now how about we take a walk or something? I need to see if I can't pick up a lil' bit of energy, and there ain't a lot in here to draw if from." 

"Yeah, that's fair." Moving might help your mental state too. Plus...for some reason, you really want a smoothie, and at this point you think you might actually deserve one.


	4. Chapter 4

The barista at Starbucks has clear golden eyes with horizontal pupils like a goat's and tiny, velvet-covered nubs of antlers just barely poking out of her blonde hair. You're not really sure how the fuck you never noticed that before—sure, you don't come here _often_ , but you've been here and seen her before. That's something obvious and noticeable, and you just flat out missed it.

You're also not sure that you manage to not stare the whole time you're trying to order.

...yeah. You were staring. You must have been, because she rolls her eyes when you tell her your name for your smoothie. Griffin groans when you retreat back to the furthest open seat from the counter. "That's a fae," he tells you as you pull out your phone and hit enough buttons to make raising it to your ear look not too fake. "Dammit, why the hell does a coffee shop have a resident fae? That's gotta be some kind of break with the treaties..."

You desperately want to just ask him what treaties he's talking about, but being that obvious will definitely get you some weird looks at least, so... "No, I don't know what that one means."

"Kid, we've got to come up with a better way to communicate in public."

"I know, I'm sorry." You say that a lot when you're actually on the phone. That's an interesting thought. "I still don't know what you're talking about, though."

"Hm? Oh, the girl. She's a fae—looks like a human, talks like a human, isn't a human. Probably got a glamour on to hide the horns and eyes from most people—"

"I think they're antlers." Shit, that's not a normal thing to say on a phone call. You bite the inside of your cheek and keep your eyes on the table.

"She's got ram's eyes, I'm pretty sure they're horns. A glamour's minor magic; pretty much everything that can't shapeshift can cast one. My point _is_ , if a fae gets your name they can have _you_ , kid. She shouldn't be here. Ain't right."

"Oh." That...makes sense and vaguely concerns you at the same time, but you have more pressing concerns. The golden-eyed barista has your drink ready at the counter already, and her mouth's open to call your name, so you shrug at Griffin and slide out of your chair to collect it and pay before she gets irritated enough to do whatever magic she can with what she already has of you. You're out of the Starbucks and two blocks away before you realize that the name on the cup is _Cape_ , not _Ray._ It's not a mistake, though—she put an address and a time underneath it.

Griffin watches you come to a stop on the sidewalk to just stare at the neat black numbers and letters for a good few seconds before he points out, "Kid. Ray. This is your common sense speaking. Getting laid isn't worth it, trust me."

"She's not going to sleep with me." You wouldn't even have thought of that if he hadn't brought it up, and honestly it's...not that appealing, even with how pretty she was. Something is probably wrong with you. Well, several things are _definitely_ wrong with you, but this specifically is probably a sign of one you hadn't even considered yet.

"Damn right she's not going to sleep with you—she's a fae. She knows you saw what she is; you're a threat."

"Oh my god." You look up from the cup to at least try to glare at him. From the way Griffin rolls his eyes, you do a bad job of it. "Right. I'm a threat. What am I going to do, bleed on her?"

That...might actually be upsetting to him. He winces when you gesture at the currently-covered scars on your arms, at least. "You're hunter-marked. The tattoo on your back? For all she knows, you're planning to track her down and kill her later."

"I couldn't." That's horrible. It pulls up a mental image clear and graphic enough that you suspect you're tapping into Griffin's memories again. You've had this ghost stuff for maybe a week and you already hate it. "You people do that?"

Yeah. The pain on his face...he's seen what just flashed through your head. "Some of us. I tra—I used to track the kind of bastards who did that shit. Put then down like—"

"Rabid dogs." More images, overlaid on the street around you. If you hadn't already drank half your smoothie it'd be overflowing from how tightly your hand's clamped down around the flimsy cup, deforming it and raising the level of the thick, green liquid inside. "Stop it."

Griffin blinks, then shakes his head. "I'm not trying to show you that—"

"You still are." Bodies. Corpses. Is that what you looked like, on the bloodstained bathroom floor? Your skull's going to split apart, crack down the middle; you can't take this. That could be _you._ Worse still, that used to be someone else. "Stop, okay, just—please, _stop_ —"

If you'd realized that he was going to reach for you, you probably would have stepped back. Or something. As it is, you just sort of...flinch. You almost drop your cup; the hand that Griffin's not reaching for your face with closes around yours just in time to keep your drink from ending up on the concrete.

His palm is cool on your forehead, like it was back in your room. After a second, you realize that not only did you close your eyes when he reached for you, but that there's nothing but reddish darkness behind your eyelids. When you open them again, Griffin's watching you with worry in his dark eyes.

It feels...strange, to have that directed specifically and inarguably at you. You're not really sure how to handle it, other than the obvious response of just sort of brushing this whole incident off. "...yeah. That stopped it. Thanks." 

"Yeah, well." He shrugs and takes his hand away from your face, leaving the one keeping you from dropping your drink where it is a moment longer. His eyes stay on your face, too; after a second of trying to look at him you give up on that and decide to try to pretend _he’s_ not looking so you don’t have to either, etiquette breaches be damned. "Fingers crossed that it keeps working to make it stop, right?"

"How about crossing our fingers that we won't need it to?" You honestly don't want to be so... _attacked_ by someone else's memories again. Like, ever.

"Nah, that's just asking for something to happen." Griffin gives you an easy smile that feels weird after the concern you saw a minute ago, letting go of your hand where it's still wrapped around the cup and snorting as you fumble with the thing. "Nothing short of me taking a turn in your body's going to keep you from meeting that fae, huh?" 

You glance down at the address and time that you've already memorized, remember the resigned look on her—Cape's? Is that her name?—face as she took your order, and shake your head. "Not even that. I think I could kick you out if I had something worth going to bat for."

Griffin groans as you start to walk and he trails behind you. "Kid, you're _so_ fucked."

"Uh-huh, sure. Don't worry about it."

"You know I'm gonna."

* * *

The address turns out to be a bookstore, one that you've never noticed before. You're honestly not sure if that's because of more magic (why is there so much of it here?) Or because it's just...not that obvious. The place isn't built to be noticed, really; you spend ten minutes trying to find the entrance, and another ten wandering through the claustrophobic alleys between the packed shelves, looking for an owner. Or other customers. Or any signs that you haven't dropped into another dimension, honestly.

"Damn, this place is a fire hazard." Griffin's not as unnerved as you are; he pauses to pull a book from a shelf, frowning as he flips through the pages. "Huh. Lalonde would kill for this one."

"What?" It only occurs to you how weird it is that a ghost's holding something solid when you take the offered book. Looking at the cover immediately distracts you from that—you can't do more than glance at it for a second before the letters on the black leather cover seem to start to shift and squirm, going from dull red to almost reflective gilt to deep, untrustworthy blue—okay, nope, not going to look at that. "Holy shit."

"Yeah, you should buy it."

"I don't think I have enough money for it, Griffin."

"Eh, check your wallet, I bet they left you a credit card. D's got a soft spot for broke college students, plus they want to be able to pay you remotely for shit you might end up doing for them."

Huh. Working for hunters. You definitely feel some way about that, but you're not totally sure what way that is. Griffin blinks when you shove the book at him.

"I can't just carry it. Other people don't see me, remember?"

"If anyone asks, the book's just...magic, or something. I don't know, I'm just not carrying it!"

"Kid—"

"Take. The. _Fucking_. Book."

You know you did something even before Griffin goes stiff, but you don't know exactly _what_ even as his face blurs from the pattern of tanned skin and reddish scars that you're sort of used to by now to—

Oh. That's what he looked like when he died, you guess. God, that's a lot of blood. His eyes...they're just gone, not torn out but pierced through, destroyed in the process of the blows that killed him. The other cuts across his face—the ones you see as scars, most of the time—they came after, when he was dying from the massive brain trauma that a blade inserted through the weakest point in the skill causes or dead from it. You don't think he was dead, though—there wouldn't be scars if he didn't remember, would there?

Then Griffin shakes his head and growls under his breath and snatches the book out of your hands, and it's all back to normal. "God damn, Ray."

"Sorry." No use asking him what's wrong—you know that it's definitely you—but you might as well apologize. "Are you okay?"

"I'm dead, remember?"

"Well, yeah, but—"

"But nothing. You ain't a necromancer, you're a medium. Just because you can talk to me and command me a lil' bit don't mean you can _hurt_ me." Griffin tucks the book under his arm with another angry huff and turns away, stalking back down the narrow aisle. "C'mon. Let's go find your fae and be done with this shit." 

Well, you're not going to argue with him. You nod even though Griffin's not looking, and fall into step behind him.

* * *

It takes what seems like a while to get back to the counter by the entrance, and when you do make it there the fae girl's waiting for you. She looks...more normal, somehow? Something about the faded blue jeans and flowing floral shirt goes along with her eyes and tiny antlers; it's less of a shock than the green apron. More natural.

She's _prettier_ in the incandescent lighting of the bookstore than the coffeeshop fluorescents, too. You sort of get why Griffin thought you'd want to hook up with her. Not that you're going to say any of that. "...Cape, right?"

"Good, we've got the names straightened out, then." She grins at you, golden eyes crinkling up at the corners. "Well, those of us who're alive anyway. Is he your familiar?"

You feel like that's a word that's supposed to be used for witches, or something. Which you aren't. "I think he's my babysitter."

"Aww, cute. What do I call him?"

"I'm right here," Griffin growls, slamming the book down on the counter. (Yes, you jump. No, she doesn't.) "Don't give her my name."

Cape cocks her head to the side with a frown. "He said something, right?"

"Uh—" Are you supposed to be the translator here? Is that your job? "He told me not to tell you his name. Can you not, uhh..."

"I mean, I can _see_ him." She shrugs, tapping one index finger against her temple, right at the corner of her left eye. You notice that her nails are shorter than yours and painted very pale green. "Hart's eyes—great for seeing the unseen, all kinds of threats and hunters. I'm guessing you two are just the second one, since I don't think you could fight your way out of a paper bag."

She's got a point. Unfortunately. "I don't think I'm a hunter, either."

"You're definitely marked, though." Cape shrugs and flashes you a smile that's legitimately stunning in its brightness; you can't remember how to move away or even why you should as she leans in to trace a warm fingertip across your lips. "Not just by hunters...here. And here," her hand's on your shoulder, sparking the beginning of a memory you don't want to look at, "and here," your hand, her fingertips tracing the lines of your palm, "and _here_ —"

Your wrists. Your forearms. There's a layer of fabric in the way (well, two; you ended up grabbing a hoodie before you left, at Griffin's insistence) but she's tracing from wrist to elbow with one finger and there's no pain this time but still, still, _still_ —

Griffin steps into you in one smooth, confident motion. You're already just barely holding onto any semblance of calm or control; letting him take the metaphorical wheel is actually a relief, especially since it seems to cut the wires between the sensory input and the panic it's set off.

The fact that Cape instantly lets go when Griffin steps up probably helps too. "I'm guessing Ray's letting you do that?"

"No shit." The words come out clear instead of garbled since you're not fighting against him this time, but deeper than your normal voice. Interesting; you wonder if that's something about magic or if he just uses the mechanics of your throat and mouth differently than you do. "Don't touch his fucking arms."

"Oh." Cape tilts her head to the side; a moment later her eyes go wide as she processes your reaction a bit more. " _Oh_ —oh, shit, I'm sorry, I didn't realize—"

You hate being apologized to. Apparently guilt's a strong enough reaction to let you push Griffin out of full control long enough to protest, "I'm fine, just—it surprised me, is all—"

Griffin pushes right back. "You know you're allowed to tell her not to hit your triggers, right? Just because she's fae—

"It's not a trigger!

"For fuck's sake, of course it's a fucking trigger! Unless you're trying to tell me that shit didn't fuck you up—

"Griffin, I'm _fine_ —"

Cape clears her throat before you can either finish or lose your place to another one of Griffin's mental shoves. You're not really sure who's in control right now, but it doesn't matter because both of you have the same instinct: look at her.

She smiles once you do. "So...Griffin?"

"Damn." That's both you and the ghost.

"Relax. I don't have your name—"

"Yeah, right, you just fuckin' said it."

"You didn't _give_ it to me. Ray said it." She makes a face and smooths her hair back, leaning against the counter. "And no, I don't have the names of anyone who buys drinks during my shift either. No one just gives their names out; it's just how they know whose coffee's whose. If anything that's the _coffee's_ name."

You have no idea if that's right. Griffin, on the other hand...well, you can feel his skepticism trickling down through your own thoughts like a leaky coffee pot. "That ain't how it works in the courts."

Cape just snorts. "Riiiight, because this is definitely the Vernal fields. We're not in the courts, or I wouldn't have let you know _my_ name."

"...huh." Unlike you, Griffin seems to have forgotten that Cape wrote her name on the cup instead of yours. He spends a second readjusting to that, then, "Wait, what the fuck?" 

"I mean, it's sort of my name." She shrugs, twisting a strand of hair around her finger. "It's not my _name_ , but Griffin isn't totally your name either, not unless it's endowed with that kind of power—it's why I'm always a little off script, 'what name do you want on the cup' instead of 'can I get a name for your order?' I mean, it's not _hard_ to not be a dick about it. Keeping the glamour up is way harder."

Griffin's well and truly confused now. You take the opportunity to _push_ , harder than before, and send him staggering back, out of and away from you. "Hey!"

"Oh, shut up." (You think you might have to apologize to him for that, but he goes quiet instead of going off on you, so you guess that's a problem for later.) "I don't understand all this stuff with names."

"Ooh." Cape's head tilts the other way this time, eyes fixing on you. They're very...intense. You don't know how you feel about it. "Wow, you're really not a hunter, huh?"

"A week ago I wasn't _anything._ "

"Hey, that's okay—we all start somewhere. Come on, I'll find you a copy of The Annotated Alice and we can talk about quid pro quo and the stuff you're going to need to watch out for, okay?"

* * *

She picks you out a copy of Alice in Wonderland and another book by Carrol—you've never heard of it, much less read it, and when you flip through a few of the ten stories in the collection you can't tell if they're some kind of weird riddles or just strange stories. You're also not sure how they're supposed to help you. You buy the unnerving black-bound book that Griffin picked up because he won't stop reminding you about it the whole time Cape's tracking down the ones she wants for you.

"I don't get why you're so uptight about it," he grumbles almost in your ear as Cape slips behind the counter and starts manipulating the cash register, which looks like it's significantly older than you are. "It's not like you can even read the damn thing—"

"You don't know that."

"—and it's not going to open itself up and spit anything out at you without being read. It's a _book_ , kid."

"It's a magic book and I'm not touching it."

"Look, inside the store is one thing, but I can't carry the damn thing all the way home." Griffin sounds like he's trying to stay patient while explaining the mechanisms of everyday life to a toddler. "Even if you don't give a fuck about having weird shit get noticed, it's still _heavy._ "

"It's one book, how heavy can it be?"

Griffin just huffs and pinches at the bridge of his nose. Cape's the one who answers, without even looking up.

"He's a ghost, Ray. Most of them can't manipulate solid matter at all; moving anything bigger than a planchette takes either a lot of emotion, a lot of practice, or someone else feeding them power. It's why I asked if he was your familiar."

"Oh." Okay. Fine. Griffin really can't carry the book. "I still don't want to touch it."

"It sets off your spidey senses, huh?" Cape hits one more button on the register, and a drawer slides out with a sharp _ding!_ She deposits the payment for her two books in the drawer, picks out coins for change, and shuts the drawer again. "I'm guessing you're not paying with cash, right?"

"Is that going to be a problem?" You _really_ hope she says yes.

But no, she shakes her head and leans across the counter to get the book. "No, the bookshop adapts. It even does ebooks now, but you still have to come here the first time before you can find the website."

Huh. You have no idea what that means. "...do you work here or something?"

"Oh. No." Cape frowns, looking between the book in her hand and the cash register, and hits a few more buttons as she amends that. "Well, sort of, I guess? Nobody really works here, but you get the hang of buying things after a couple times. Give me your card?"

"Uh—" It's in your wallet, which is still in your pocket. Griffin snorts as you dig for the stupid thing, but Cape just waits patiently until you find the credit card D Strider added to your wallet and hand it over. "Is it just me or does everything you're saying not make sense?"

"Probably both." Despite the fact that nothing about the apparently-antique register suggests that it can take a card, Cape hits the button to open the cash drawer again and...swipes your card. Somehow. "Magic doesn't always make sense unless you know how to make sense of it. Sort of like this shop—unless you know what you're looking for or it really likes you, you can't actually find it. I figured meeting here would be fine since it tends to not let any fights break out."

"That's...good, I guess?" You watch as she wraps the book in newspapers that look older than you are and slides it into a bag, trying to make sense of this whole conversation. "You talk about it like it's alive."

"Yeah? It is?" Cape raised an eyebrow and holds out your card in one hand and the bag in the other, waiting for you to take it. "Some places are alive just like some things are alive."

"Buildings aren't alive—"

"The safehouse is," Griffin interrupts. You look over at him and see that he's picked your pocket; he's typing out a text on your phone. "Can't believe you of all people couldn't sense that, honestly."

Well, you did sense something when you were there, but... "I thought that was just ghosts—give me that—"

He doesn't seem to move, really. You can't say that he steps back or ducks away from your hand, but when you try to grab for your phone you come up inches short. Behind you, Cape laughs; Griffin doesn't even look up from the screen. "Kid, you need to calm down."

"There's a _ghost._ Texting someone on _my_ phone. I'm holding a haunted book. I almost died less than a week ago. I resurrected a, a demigod? I'm inside a building that's apparently _alive._ I have a job offer from a group of _demon hunters_." You're getting a little dizzy making this list; something about your breathing isn't quite right. "You possessed me because you didn't think I could handle my dad disowning me over the phone. My roommate thinks I'm working for the illuminati. And somehow, _somehow_ , _I'm_ the one who needs to calm down?"

Griffin's looking at you now, the phone more-or-less forgotten in his hand. Cape's looking too; she circles around the counter and slips an arm around your shoulders. Funny; you feel like that's a weird gesture but you can't help but lean into it almost immediately.

"I don't know about calming down," she says, nudging you towards one of the book aisles that you haven't been down yet, "but I think maybe you should sit down. Preferably before you _fall_ down."

Oh. Maybe Cape has a point. You'd sit right on the floor if she'd let you at this point...but she doesn't seem too inclined to do that. Instead, you let yourself be led around a corner and to an almost claustrophobic nook with a battered wooden table and five or six mismatched chairs.

Cape nudges you to the closest one and disentangles herself from you, making a sympathetic sound as you collapse into the patched green upholstery. Which...again, sympathy sets off guilt sets off...too many emotions. Enough that you groan and cover your face with both hands, wondering if it's possible to sit here long enough that everyone leaves.

"Not really, kid."

"Shut _up_." The two words come out with a wavery note that vaguely surprises you, and for some reason you have to gasp in a breath right after you say them, like you didn't really have enough air in your lungs to speak. "Just—shut up, shut up, shut _up_ shut up shut—"

"Hey." Cape's hand threads through your hair, startling you enough to break the chain of words that you can't seem to derail yourself. "It's okay, Ray. Deep breaths. You're okay. Either Griffin's going to be quiet, or I'm going to lay a geas on him to _make_ him be quiet, okay? Right now you just need to breathe."

You're definitely breathing. Whether you're doing it properly is debatable, but after a minute you remember that time can be measured, and start counting seconds _in_ and seconds _out_ , measuring your breathing until you're...well, a lot less dizzy and a little less shaky. You don't even try to take your hands down from your face until the dizziness is almost completely gone.

Of course, as soon as you do that your hands start trembling. Cape wraps her hands around your wrists while you're still staring at your own palms, holding you steady and waiting for you to focus on her instead.

That takes you another minute, but you get it eventually. The understanding expression on her face is enough to get you to just close your eyes. "I swear this isn't normal," you tell her, trying to get the discomfort under control. "I'm, uh."

"In the middle of developing a trauma disorder?" Griffin offers.

"I don't have a trauma disorder. Shut up."

"Are you fucking _kidding_ me right now, kid."

Cape lets go of your wrists, and you realize that your hands aren't shaking anymore. Huh. That's good. You think. "I'm still walking you home," she informs you. "Panic attacks mess you up no matter what makes you have them, trust me."

"I didn't have a panic attack." You struggle up out of the chair—furniture should not be that willing to just swallow up whoever sits in it—and glare at Griffin because you can't really imagine glaring at Cape. He just gives you an exasperated look, flipping you off with one hand when that doesn't stop you. "But—yeah. You can come over, if you want. I don't think my roommate cares as long as we don't set the place on fire."

Cape smiles, all sharp too-white teeth. "Yeah, we'll save the arson for later."

She says it like she's joking, but you think she might be serious. You think...you'll leave that for future Ray to take care of.


	5. Chapter 5

Jason doesn't seem to see anything weird about Cape. You guess that makes sense— _you_ didn't see anything weird about her until the whole unlocking hidden powers thing happened—but it's still unnerving. Even more unnerving is the fact that she apparently already knows him from somewhere. He doesn't just greet random people with a fist bump—that's an acquaintance thing. Maybe even a friend thing, you don't know.

The way Cape smiles at him suggests that it might be at least a friend thing. "Hey, douche."

"Oh, fuck you." But he's grinning too. "Like your blind date setup didn't ruin my life for like a month—"

"Hey, you're the one who asked for hot and said you didn't care about personality," Cape laughs, glancing over at you and raising an eyebrow. That's probably supposed to prompt you to do something. "Did dealing with Danika push you into getting back with Hayley at least?"

"Nah, she's still trying to ruin my life. She's nicer about it now though." Jason shrugs and looks past Cape to you. You wonder if he just now realized that you actually came in with her. "Pro tip? If Cape says she has a girl you should meet, don't listen to her. She mixes great drinks and does a really shitty job of matchmaking."

"...yeah." You literally cannot imagine a situation where you'd take anyone up on the offer of a date. _Especially_ with someone you don't even know. "I think I have that under control, thanks. Uh—come on, Cape."

She laughs and takes your arm, letting you lead her to your room. It...feels weird, shutting the door with someone else in here with you. God, your social life is pathetic...you don't want to deal with that right now. You don't want to deal with _anything_ right now; Cape gives you that questioning look again and again, instead of addressing whatever she wants you just sort of...gesture at the chair by the desk and let yourself collapse face-down onto the bed.

That makes you feel better almost instantly. Not a _lot_ better, sure, but hey—you'll take what you can get. You feel the bed move as Cape sits down on it instead of on the chair; at least she goes for the other side instead of right next to you. Somehow you think you'd feel like a creep if she was right there.

Speaking of which... "Remind me why you came home with me."

"It's just how fae are, kid," Griffin offers from somewhere over by the door. Probably by the door. You're not looking up to check on him right now. "You let them in and you're stuck. Can't get rid of them without a Balancekeeper's restraining order."

"I don't know what that is."

"What, a restraining order? Damn, lucky you."

"You're not funny, Griffin."

Going by his low laugh, he definitely thinks he is. "Balancekeeper's like a demon and a lawyer had a baby. Or just got shoved in a damn blender and someone made a homunculus or some shit out of the goo. Hunters have...an agreement with them. The good ones, anyway."

You're not sure if he means good hunters or good Balancekeepers. Maybe both. Wait, Cape never answered your question.

You roll over and frown up at her. She smiles back, with a sweetness that vaguely unnerves you. "Penny for your thoughts, sunshine?"

"If I agree to that, is there any chance you can just take them?" That seems to be pretty much how fae work, according to Griffin. You'd like to not think.

But Cape just smiled and shakes her head, winding a lock of reddish hair around one finger. "Eh, I think I'll pass on the whole thought-buying deal—I'm not really into the army-of-mindless-warriors thing. I like my men to be able to function without me."

"That just makes the question of why you came home with me even more relevant." _You_ certainly aren't functional. You just want to go to sleep and ignore all your responsibilities until they're not your problem anymore.

"Are you really going to do that, kid?"

"Griffin, I swear to god if you don't get out of my head I'm going to do the freaky ghost command thing again."

"Don't think that's exactly how the compulsion works, sorry. I get _more_ in your head when you order me around like that, if anything."

Well...shit. That was the only halfway decent use of that specific power that you could think of, and he's here telling you that it's going to do the exact opposite of what you want if you try. "God damn it."

"You know, it's actually fun watching you talk to him." Cape cocks her head, glances over to where Griffin's leaning against the wall like he thinks he's Henry Winkler in the seventies, looks back down at you. You would prefer that she wasn't looking at you—it makes you feel like you're doing something wrong by staring at her, but at the same time you literally can't _not_ do that. It's her eyes, you think. Too bright, too direct, too...too _something_. They make you dizzy, even now when you're lying on your back on a familiar mattress.  
You sort of wonder just how much of a defense (or even a weapon) Cape can make of her own appearance when she wants to. Finding out would probably be a bad idea. 

"Fuck's sake, kid, that's what I keep _telling_ you."

"Shut up, Griffin." That's an order, yeah, but you don't think it counts as a compulsion like your telling him to take the book was—you don't feel the same power in the words as you say them, no twist of something more than just speaking. It's just words. "Cape, I'm serious. I don't know what you want."

"Well." She shrugs, and finally looks away from you. You think it's a conscious choice—she's removing you from her direct influence, letting you have a minute. You use that minute to close your eyes, just in case she looks back. "What'd he tell you?"

"That all fae are stalkers."

"Okay, first of all? Ouch. Second of all, the two of you _obviously_ need an actual living person who knows what's going on here. Griffin has one half of that, you have the other, and they're _really_ not matching up too well."

Griffin makes a scandalized noise. What he's planning to say is pretty obvious; before he can actually get it out, you tell Cape, "Griffin says he's doing just fine here, thanks."

"Ray, you didn't even know what a fae was."

"So?" You know now. Sort of. It's fine.

" _So_ , not knowing could have gotten you killed." Cape's hand brushes against the side of your face; your body seems to be torn between flinching back and leaning into it. The two urges balance out nicely, meaning you don't have to move at all. "A hunter would know to be careful with his name—some even change theirs, you know. Or lie about them. Or both. You're not a hunter." 

"No shit." If you open your eyes you're going to see _her_ eyes, and get caught in that weird power again. You know this and you do it anyway...but she's watching Griffin, and unless you move you're out of her direct line of eyesight. You're not even going to try to figure out how you feel about that. "Nobody thinks I'm a hunter."

"Well, he's definitely treating you like one." Cape makes a face—from this angle it's actually vaguely disturbing—and gestures at Griffin. "I mean, unless he treats everyone like this, in which case I don't even know how many noncoms he got killed while he was still alive—"

"Noncoms?" You feel like you've heard that one in some other old show. Something more militaristic. Wait, that doesn't matter, since you still can't find context for the term.

Griffin doesn't have that problem, though. "Non combatants. Fancy ass word for the innocent bystanders. She means the normies, kid."

"Normies definitely sounds worse."

"Yeah, that's why I go with noncoms." Cape shrugs and looks down for long enough to flash you a quick smile. "You're not quite normal, but you're definitely not hunter-level. Yet."

Somehow you don't like that _yet_. Leave it alone for now, though. "So you're just trying to keep me alive."

"Well, that, and you _look_ interesting. Like you're at a crossroads."

"No." There's no crossroads here, metaphorical or literal. You did something stupid, you almost died, you got unbelievably lucky and _didn't_ die, you're going to continue with your life. Minus your parents' presence, of course. And with a ghost. Maybe more than one ghost if any of the buildings that people call haunted really are. But you can ignore that just like you ignore a lot of personal things, just...deal with it. Get through the classes, scrape up a passing grade, if you ever do graduate—

You know what, no. Screw this. That's a big _if_ and you're not happy with how badly you struggle now—there's no point in doing this, not really. All the reprisal that your dad's threatened is just...it's gone. Not hanging over your head anymore, thanks to Griffin. You can do literally anything you want now.

Unfortunately the only thing you _really_ want is to not go to college.

"Hey, that's a start." Griffin again; he's leaning over you when you snap out of the momentary existential crisis you ended up in for a second, a weird look on his face. You think about telling him to get out of your head and decide that it's not worth it. "You've got a lil' bit of a safety net right now, kid. Maybe an even better one once you hand that book over to Lalonde; she pays finder's fees, you know."

Oh, yeah, the book. It's still in the bag, probably contaminating everything you own with freaky eldritch vibes. "I don't think I can send that through the mail."

"The book?" The bed makes a clearly audible and vaguely embarrassing squeak as Cape gets up to get the bag from where you left it by the door. She hefts it in one hand, like she's judging its weight instead of noticing the fact that it's literally the worst thing you've ever touched. "I mean, there's not really any reason why you _couldn't_. If it was me, I might wrap it in fabric that's been marked with protection runes, but like. I'm into overkill."

"I wouldn't call it overkill." Not enough, maybe, but not overkill. You can imagine having the FBI or the CIA or whoever's in charge of regulating the postal service breaking down your door in the middle of the night because of some...secret mail law or something. That's going to be on the top of the list of things to avoid. "...uh. How far is it to Texas, exactly? Without the, you know. Weird demon magic."

Griffin cocks his head to one side and grins, letting it spread slow and deliberate across his face. "You thinking about packing up and going back?"

"I—" Huh. You honestly don't know how to feel about that suggestion. It's probably cowardice talking when you shake your head. "I'm thinking about delivering the book. That's it. Maybe, I don't know, picking up a couple jobs on the way there and back—there's more hunters than just the ones you were with, some of them probably need someone like me, right?"

"Yeah, definitely." He holds out a hand, waiting for a moment. You have no idea what he wants. "Your phone, kid."

"Oh." It's in your pocket; you have to shift around a bit to reach it. It's not until you've handed it over that you think of the obvious question. "Wait, why do you need—"

"Dirk'll line you up some jobs." The ghost's already typing; he doesn't even look up. "Hell of a lot easier than trying to do it yourself, trust me. _Always_ use the network you got."

"...I'll keep that in mind." Even if you technically don't have a network beyond...Griffin, you guess. Jason doesn't really count; you don't think you have anything to offer him in exchange for whatever help he'd give you. "Any idea how long he'll take to answer?"

"Eh, couple hours at the most."

"So we can leave tomorrow." Maybe before your common sense kicks in, in other words.

"Do I get to come with you?" Cape asks, tucking the book back into the bag. "I mean, I'm definitely going to follow you either way, but it'd be more fun if you're not trying to lose me."

"Uh." Okay, how exactly are you supposed to respond to that? "Uh...why."

She shrugs. "Starbucks is getting boring and you're not."

"Oh." Again, you don't have any idea what the right response is. Well, other than the one Griffin isn't going to like. "So...am I picking you up or are we going to meet somewhere?"

Sure enough, the ghost groans. You guess you can't really blame him—none of this seems to be a well-thought-out idea.

But hey. At least you're acting on your own now.

Sort of.


	6. Chapter 6

It turns out that you have a limit of about two hours at the wheel before someone has to spell you. You're not the one who sets this limit—that would be a joint agreement between Griffin and Cape, once he gets a glimpse into what you start thinking about after a while and she hears your side of the argument over whether or not everyone starts thinking about velocity and impact after a while of driving. That's normal. Acting on it would not be normal, sure, but the occasional self-destructive urge is just...something that's there and you deal with. Everyone deals with. It's totally normal.

They both look at you like it's _not_ normal, at this point in the conversation. After a moment of this, you bite back a groan and shift a bit in the seat, staring out over your hands on the steering wheel like the road demands your attention just as much as if you were doing five miles over the speed limit, even though you're pulled over into the shoulder. "Okay. Fine. I'll rephrase. It's normal for _me_."

"There you go," Cape agrees, with one of those bright smiles that seem to turn your brain off a little bit. How does she _do_ that? "You're still taking a break."

"And a nap," Griffin adds.

"I don't sleep in cars." Not moving ones, anyway. "Look, if you'd stay out of my head it wouldn't even be an issue—"

"That's debatable."

"—shut up, Cape—"

"Nah, she's got a point."

"You shut up too." You groan without bothering to stifle it and lean forward until your forehead hits the steering wheel. It smells like fake leather and cleaning products. This is literally a new car, what the hell are _you_ doing in it? Wait, no, that's not a broad enough question. "Remind me what I'm doing here again?"

Griffin snorts. "Really, kid?"

"Yes, really." You're actually a little surprised at just how irritated you are at his tone. That's probably why you don't catch the next words before they leave your mouth. "Fuck off if you're going to be like that. I can always turn around and go home."

(Sort of. Jason would ask questions. Then again, you could just...not answer.)

"Don't be a dick, Griffin." There's the tiny _click_ of a seatbelt unclipping, the rustle of Cape scooting forward in the backseat she claimed during the process of loading shit into the car; then she puts a hand on your shoulder, a brief pressure that's there and then just as quickly gone. "Immediate task? You're driving. Short-term task? We're on our way to the address your friends—"

"I don't know if I count as their friend." What even is the word for someone who sort of helped raise your worst enemy from the dead, almost died, and had to be saved? Is there even a word for that? You don't think there is. Somehow the fact that you're making yourself useful to the hunters now makes it even more confusing.

"Okay," Cape says, calmly and reasonably enough that you have a little trouble focusing on her words instead of the tone of voice they're spoken in, "your _hunters_ gave you an address, and we're driving there to do a walkthrough and make sure there's no ghosts, or whatever."

"God, this all sounds completely batshit."

Griffin snorts again, more of a laugh this time. "You'll get used to it eventually."

"That doesn't help." You don't know if you _want_ to get used to it. Plus, how long would that even take? You don't think you've felt comfortable and accustomed to any state of being since...well. Maybe when you were a little kid or something. That's not a great thought, probably.

"Yeah, no shit it's not great. You really have been major-league depressed fuckin' forever, haven't you?"

...maybe. Everyone keeps saying that, anyway. "Shut up, Griffin. Am I allowed to drive or not?"

"Um," Cape starts, and then hesitates. "Well..."

"I can drive," Griffin offers. You look over at him and he shrugs, showing his teeth in a grin that's as sheepish as anything else. "C'mon, kid, you know what I mean."

That _you'd_ be what he'd be driving. The car's secondary. But...you know what, you're tired, of arguing and if driving and of dealing with this whole weird situation, and this takes all of it off the table for a little while at least. You shrug and lean back against the seat, trying to relax even if you don't know if that'll actually do anything here. "Yeah, go ahead. Put me the hell out."

Griffin chuckles, reaching over to put his hands over yours on the steering wheel. Funny—this time you feel them, sort of. No pressure, but a faint warmth where his skin touches yours. "Like the phone call, huh?"

"Exactly like the phone call."

"Can do, kid. Three, two—"

You don't hear the _one_.

* * *

Griffin must end up sleeping in your body before he leaves it, or whatever the technical term for the act of not possessing someone anymore is—you wake up without that displaced feeling that you've felt when he separated from you the last few times. There _is_ a different sense of displacement, but it's got more to do with the fact that you wake up in the backseat.

...Cape literally built a nest back here, you realize as you shake the grogginess out of your head and push back a pillow that you don't remember packing. That was on the couch at Jason's place when you left, wasn't it? Actually...you don't care. Worst case scenario, you're losing your mind, and that doesn't even matter at this point.

"Guys."

"Hey, he's awake." Cape reaches up to adjust the mirror with one hand, keeping the other on the steering wheel. She's not keeping her eyes on the road, though; the grin she flashes you in the rearview proves that much. "You owe me like, twenty bucks pixel cash, Griff."

"My name ain't Griff," Griffin growls from the passenger seat. You shift to look at him; he's got your phone (again) typing out something on it. A text to Cape, since her phone dings where she's got it propped up in the cupholder for hands-free viewing. "Kid, why the hell can't you sleep for more than ten minutes at a time?"

Good question. Instead of answering it, you grimace at him, hopefully horribly enough that he can tell just how dissatisfied with the current situation you are. "I hate you. Why am I back here?"

Cape shrugs. She might smile at you too, but you've decided to avoid the full force of that by not looking at the rearview mirror. "Griffin wanted the front seat. He has your phone, by the way—"

"I noticed."

"Hey, it works a hell of a lot better to get shit across than anything else we could come up with," Griffin points out. "She still can't hear me, and typing doesn't exactly take much energy."

You don't get how he can type at all, but you guess it doesn't matter. There's better use you can put questions to. "...great. Tell me if anyone important texts me...where are we?"

"Well," Cape says, and Griffin snorts out a laugh as she hesitates before giving you the rest of the answer. "About five hundred miles away from where we were before?"

You think about that for a moment. Do the math, and all that. "...you two kept me out for ten hours, huh."

"Yeah, more or less." Griffin shrugs, leaning around the seat to study you. "You mad about it?"

"Uh..." Are you? You _did_ get that break from reality you were wanting, and it's not like anything feels worse because of it. If anything, you feel _better_. Like you slept through the night, or something. "Not really. We _are_ going to stop somewhere for the night before we meet up with Hal's...whoever, right?"

"Your little fae princess insisted we take a fuckin' hundred mile detour to stop by her ex's place, so yeah, we're staying the night somewhere." Griffin rolls his eyes and settles back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. "I still say we don't need to stop that long...could just take turns driving."

"I don't think that's safe."

"Is he talking about sleeping in the car again?" When you nod, Cape groans and smacks her palm down on the center console. "Oh my god. No thanks. I've done that, like, twice, and it's horrible. If it's more than a cat nap you end up sore for a _week_ , and not in the fun way. We're _so_ not doing that."

Griffin shoots her a ineffective glare. "Still coulda got a hotel," he grumbles. "There's no good reason to waste this much time."

Hm. "You're dead," you point out. "You literally have all the time in the world. She's...immortal. Or something. Right?"

"Eh, close enough. I'm halfblood, but it's not like human blood dilutes fae all that much."

"...great. So you two don't have to worry about time, and I just...don't care." Huh. Saying that feels good, for some reason. Should you expand on that? Probably not, but somehow you find yourself doing it anyway. "I don't care. I don't care how long getting there takes, I don't _really_ care where I'm going as long as it's not back to school or back to my parents, I don't care where we spend the night as long as you two don't make me play peacemaker, I just...I don't care. I don't _care._ I'm doing what you want, please dear god don't make me pretend I care how or why any more."

Cape and Griffin have both gone silent. Dammit. You fucked up. Can you deal with that by refusing to say anything else, refusing to look away from the half-set sun outside the window?

Doubtful. But...it works for a while. Maybe a minute, maybe two.

Then Griffin mumbles, "Remind me to talk Rose into talking to you about that shit," and you find yourself rolling your eyes because yeah, sure, she'll really want to do that with someone who started as a problem and might move up to a half-useful delivery man, and the worry that they're actually going to make you answer questions _now_ starts to fade as Cape shrugs and makes a turn onto an unpaved road. At least if the difficult conversation's still in the future, you can keep pretending it doesn't exist for a while.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> didn't proofread this at all so feel free to point out typos

It's still what feels like a long time before Cape pulls into the driveway of her friend's house. You have no real idea how long—the sun's already down and Griffin has your phone, so you don't really have a way to check. Not that you would of you could, probably—that'd be rude. Or something.

Zoning out might also count as rude, but it's not like there's a lot you can do about it. You snap back to the here and now when Cape shuts the engine off; whatever you were thinking about just evaporates into smoke and fog. You think you're grateful for that.

Griffin's watching you in a way that makes you think he might have more of a handle on your thoughts than you do right now, though. Before he can offer to let you check out of reality again, you yank the car door open and slide out of Cape's comfortable little nest, back into the cruel, painful world. The main reason that those are the two adjectives that come to mind is because your legs are mostly asleep. Yes, both of them. In the way that you don't really notice until you try to put weight on them.

The driver's side door slams while you're still doubled over, leaning against the side of the car and swearing under your breath. Cape laughs and lays a hand on your shoulder. "Need some help?"

" _Don't_ ask for it," Griffin snaps out before you can even think about whether you want to admit you're actually in a decent amount of pain. "Not from—" 

"—not from a fae, yeah, I know, shut _up_." Like you haven't slipped up roughly three hundred times so far. You force yourself to straighten up enough to glare at him. Maybe he can tell how irritated you are this time, because he takes a step back—more surprised than afraid. You're surprised yourself, honestly—it's sort of weird to feel this strongly about anything, let alone something as stupid as this. "Drop it. If she wanted to fuck me up she would have done it back at the coffeeshop—I'm sick of this, this _game_ , you seeing how many times you can warn me about her. _Drop it._ "

There's command in those last two words. Griffin is holding your phone. Griffin _drops_ your phone when you tell him to; you hear it hit the driveway and that's it, you're done.

"Ray—" Cape starts, and then goes silent as you shake your head and turn on your heel. She doesn't follow you as you start walking down the dirt road she just drove up; with any luck, she won't change her mind and do it in a minute anyway.

* * *

A mile. You walk a mile, and it only hurts for a couple steps. Well, physically anyway. You're definitely feeling something unpleasant emotionally.

By the time you turn around and start walking back, you've tentatively identified that as _guilt_. Maybe anger too, a little bit at least, but the guilt...it's different. You're used to feeling guilty, feeling like you screwed up, feeling like you failed or you're failing or you're about to fail—but it's always been, on some level, because of the knowledge of how your parents and other people close to you are going to react.

You honestly don't know how Cape and Griffin are going to react. You're not even sure you actually...screwed up. What did you even do? Stick up for one (you think _friend_ , mentally backtrack, realize there's not really another word you can think of that works) person and tell another that he's being a dick? It's not like you haven't done pretty much the same thing to Jason, for all the good it ever did.

Maybe it's because you pretty much ran away like a kid having a tantrum. Something about that.

"Nah." Griffin's voice makes you stumble; he's walking next to you when you look over, feet not raising dust from the dry dirt-and-gravel road. "It's a hell of a lot better than throwing a punch, don't you think?"

"I guess?" But you don't get physical. You just don't. "Were you following me the whole time?"

That gets a shrug, and a flash of understanding that you didn't expect—he doesn't actually know how to answer the question, binary as it is. "Sort of. On one hand, I've been back at the house texting Cape—"

"So my phone's not dead." It's a relief when Griffin shakes his head, albeit a vague one.

"Nah. Not even cracked. Sorry about that, though—didn't think to try and resist like I did the first time."

The first time. You think about that—stubbornness and pain mixing on Griffin's face before he took the book out of your hands—and grimace. "It hurts, doesn't it."

Griffin glances over, eyebrows going up. "Resisting it? Yeah. Most ghosts wouldn't stand a fuckin' chance—I've been dead a long time, and I've still got a good grip on who I used to be anyway. Gives me an edge."

...there's something right to say about the flash of emotion you get frmo him as he says that—sorrow, guilt, fury, other things in a morass so strong and consuming that you just _barely_ catch yourself as you stumble over your own feet—but you don't know what it is. There's no way you could know what it is. 

"I'm sorry—" Yeah, that's not it, but it's all you can come up with. Feeling that from Griffin _hurt_ —still hurts, actually, bad enough that you stop dead in the road and press your palms to your eyes like that's going to hold in whatever it is in you that reaches out to the ghost and brings you back... _this_. "Griffin—" 

"Oh, fuck, you felt that." Griffin hisses out a breath. After a second, you feel the half-tangible coolness of his hands on yours; you wouldn't have called the pain from that last flash _heat_ , but Griffin's touch seems to be the opposite of it anyway—not equal, but stronger. 

It occurs to you that the middle of the road in the middle of nowhere at dusk is neither the time nor place to be doing this. 

Griffin laughs as soon as you think of that. "We'll get you out of the road if there's a car, kid." 

He pulls his hands away before you drop yours from your face, unfortunately; you think you would have liked to see if he's tangible enough for you to smack him. "How are you still in my head?" 

"I'm stupid," he answers, giving you a grin that's a lot more cheerful than you know he's feeling right now. He got an echo of what you felt from him—maybe a reflection's a better word, one from a mirror that's a bit warped, doesn't reflect quite true— and he's...what? Worried? Worried. That's concern you're getting, past and around the smile. " _I'm_ stupid and _you_ open up again too fast when you get burned." 

"No I don't." You don't open up at all, as far as you know. The psychic stuff—the _medium_ stuff, isn't that what they called you?—that's not under your control. You're not the one reaching out, it's just—

Griffin's looking at you in a way you don't like at all. You open your mouth to tell him to stop, think about how likely it is that it'll come out as a command, and instead step around him to keep walking, trying and failing to keep your shoulders from coming up into a position that can't possibly be seen as anything but defensive. 

"Kid—" 

Nope. You're not turning around. 

"Ray—" 

Not even going to stop. 

"Goddamnit, kid, it's okay to not be able to shut yourself off every fucking minute." Okay, fine, he's next to you now, you guess you can look at him. _Glare_ at him, really, and feel another spike of irritation that when he just gives you a patient look like that's exactly what he expected. "Hunters that try to isolate when they're stressed don't last long—" 

"And I'm not a hunter." God, how far did you even walk? Shouldn't the house be in view by now? Around other people you can avoid this conversation, you can just not respond—

"You really want to shut me down that bad, huh?" 

"I don't want to have this conversation at all. It's not just you, don't worry." 

"Which conversation would this be, exactly?" 

He's asking it in good faith. You _hate_ that it's such an honest question, because that means that you really do have to stop and take a breath and calm yourself, you really do have to answer. If Griffin's asking the question seriously, you can't just...not answer. And answering isn't as easy as it should be, because of course everything always has to be as hard as possible for you. 

Still, you get an answer after almost a minute or so of staring at the gravel and dirt beneath your feet, even if it's probably not the right one. 

"The conversation I don't want to have," you say, carefully, because the phrasing sounds awkward and wrong even though it's the most accurate way to word it in this context, "is _what am I_ and _what's wrong with me._ I'm not a Hunter, there's something fucked up with me, that's _enough_. I don't want to know any more." 

Griffin hums thoughtfully. Even without looking up you know he's _right there_ , close enough that it'd be invasive he were alive and sharing the same air as you're breathing—but he's not. And that does make it different, stupid as that may be. "Alright. Guess we'll just wait on Lalonde or somebody for that talk, then. What else?" 

Oh, it can't be that easy. Still... "Lay off Cape." 

"Ray, you can't just treat fae like—" 

"What's she going to do?" You turn to him, holding out your hands palm-up to show off the scars running wrist to elbow. "Kill me? Fine, cool, we already did that and at least _she_ might be honest about it—" 

"There's worse shit than dying, kid." The ghost's face sets into something grim, something that you'd be at least a little creeped out by if you weren't so tired. 

"Sure. But if she's planning on doing it to me, I'd honestly rather just have it happen than spend the near future walking on eggshells around her like that." Because it's _tiring_ , thinking out every word and monitoring every action to control someone else's reaction. You do it on enforced family holidays, whenever you're home or near your parents; you can't handle doing it with someone you'll be around constantly at least until you get back to Texas and maybe longer than that. You can't do it. Thinking about doing it makes you wonder if the little tin of waxed-paper-wrapped tablets made its way into the car, or if it's back in your room at Jason's place. 

"Cape packed it." 

"Get out of my head." It's reflex at this point. You don't expect him to comply. "I'm not taking them." 

"You mean probably not taking them?" 

"...yeah." It's something you don't know if you want to do, but he's right. You can't rule out personal weakness or extenuating circumstances. "You know what, you're in charge of those. Keep me from using up the whole container before we get to Texas." 

"Eh, sure." Griffin shrugs, flashing you a grin that you can only describe as _devilish_. "But seriously, Rose can restock that for you whenever you want if it comes to that." 

"Don't tempt me." You do not need to do that. You really don't. "Let's get off the road beore we get eaten by coyotes or something." 

Griffin laughs. You know exactly what he's going to say before he says it. Even worse, you know that he's got a point. 

"Before _you_ get eaten by coyotes, kid." 

There's no point in trying to smack him. That doesn't stop you from doing it anyway.


	8. Chapter 8

Cape doesn't comment on your little outburst (you want to think of it as a tantrum, but every time that thought crosses your mind Griffin smacks you) when you get back, just introduces you to her friend—a bearded, heavyset man maybe six inches taller than you whose name is...Bee, apparently. Okay. Cool. You don't know why you're even a little surprised by an odd name after the last week or so, honestly. 

She introduces you as her friend to Bee, though. You notice it because of the wording— _this is the friend I was taking to Texas, you can call him Ray._ It's not obvious if you didn't know what you were looking at, but thanks to Griffin's insistence on the power and possible transference of names? You can't help but notice. She's deliberately wording it so your name's presented as—well, _just_ as something to call you, instead of part of your identity. 

You honestly don't know whether that's an argument for Griffin's way of thinking or for yours. Trying to work that out isn't exactly helping the headache you're starting, either. You're distracted by thinking about things and by trying to ignore that headache, which means that you actually jump when Cape touches your arm. 

"This one's your room," she tells you, nodding at the door you don't remember walking up to. "Bee wants me to do the tour with them, but you can go lie down if you—" 

"Yeah." You're being rude. You know you're being rude, but you're also a little desperate to take the offer she just extended. "I just—yeah. Sorry." 

"Stop apologizing," Griffin grumbles from somewhere behind you. 

Cape just shakes her head. "You're good, Ray—most of the stuff Bee wants to show off is restorations he's done since the last time I was here. Not as impressive if you don't know what it looked like before, right?" 

" ...uh. Yeah. " That's...probably still sort of rude, but you honestly can't think of what else to say. Instead of trying to figure it out, you step into the room that's apparently yours for the night and close the door.

* * *

The room is...interestingly decorated. You'd call the style vintage, maybe? Everything looks old. Laying down on the intricate quilt that covers the bed feels wrong, but all that you have the energy for right now is to kick off your shoes, strip out of your jacket and just...collapse. 

Once you're down you realize that you didn't turn the lights off. Damn it. Eh, the pillow is within reach and pulling it over your face blocks the light out as effectively as you could hope for. It's fine. It's _fine_. 

"Want me to turn them off, kid?" 

Oh. Griffin. "Yeah. Please." There's no obvious visual change—you already have the pillow over your head—but you hear the little _click_. "Thanks." 

"Eh, I'm stealing your phone so it's a fair trade off." 

You guess that's fair. The pillow being over your face probably isn't the safest way to sleep, but you don't think you really care when it's this comfortable. 

Weird. It smells like lavender. 

Somehow, that's sort of nice.

* * *

You make it to the very edge of sleep—the point where you're not even awake anymore, just not quite fully unconscious—and snap awake again, heart pounding like...

Like what? 

"Ray?" 

"I'm fine." Like you saw a ghost, you guess. Or felt one—you still almost feel cool hands on your wrist, but Griffin's ten feet away, sprawled out in a rocking chair that definitely would not be stable if he was corporeal. The light from the phone screen doesn't touch his face; it's an odd effect. You spend a second staring, not totally on purpose. 

Then you roll over and close your eyes again. Maybe the pillow on your face was a bad idea after all.

* * *

This time, the rush of startled adrenaline has you upright and pushing yourself back from whatever isn't there before you blink and realize that again, you're awake without ever really falling asleep. Griffin's next to the bed when you get your eyes to focus, frowning in either concern or irritation as he opens his mouth. 

You flip one hand at him to hopefully get him to shut up, absently noting that that hand's shaking. Like, noticeably. "Be quiet for a second." 

"What?" 

"Shh." You heard something. You swear that's what woke you up—a whisper, a quiet voice. A touch on your arm and shoulder, sure, but that you could have imagined. A voice in this silent room, though? You're not so sure. 

But there's nothing now. 

...or you just can't quite hear it. "Do you know where Cape packed the you-know-what?" 

Griffin's eyebrows go up a good inch, not that you can blame him. "Damn, you want your drugs already?" 

"Not the whole tin." You _almost_ trust yourself to not take more than one. Almost. "Just—there's something here. Or I'm being jumpy. Taking one would fix that either way, right?" 

"Depends on how much you want to stretch the definition of fixing shit, but y'know what?" Griffin shrugs, dropping your phone on the bed next to you. "Sure. You want anything else from the car?" 

"Unless you have my sanity stashed away somewhere, I think that's it." 

He actually laughs as he heads for the door. You can't help but watch with fascination when you realize that he isn't going to bother opening it.

* * *

Griffin's back after...well, not enough time for you to settle down enough to see if you can not-quite-sense the presence that you really think might be a ghost again. He phases through the door and tosses you the paper-wrapped tablet, which you just _barely_ catch. Hey, it's dark and you have shitty reflexes at the best of times, okay? 

The second thing he throws at you just hits you in the shoulder. "Ow." 

"Kid, you can't just take drugs dry." Griffin rolls his eyes and settles back down into the rocking chair as you pick up the...beverage he got for you. _Beverage_ might be pushing it, honestly; it's a juice box. "I'd be making you eat too if I didn't remember putting food in your stomach for you." 

"Please never say those words in that order again." You know what he means—he ate when he was piloting your body, somewhere in the hours of driving he did (which explains why you're not vaguely starving right now)—but that phrasing definitely dealt some psychic damage. Not what you want when you're about to take illicit substances with an individually packaged grape juice. 

The juice box tastes better than you expected, though. Not cloyingly sweet like you're sort of used to. It's worth more than the one sip you have to take to force the tablet down; you feel stupid sitting in bed and sucking on the tiny straw, but hey. Not like anyone's watching. 

Unfortunately, the juice is still gone in a couple mouthfuls, leaving you with the dawning realization that there's no trash can in here. Okay. Fine. You're still not leaving the room. Instead you get up, pick up your jacket from the floor (you shouldn't have dropped it there anyway) and put the empty container in the pocket before draping it over the creepily tarnished mirror standing against the wall by the door. This has the effect of making it even more creepy, but hey. You tried. 

When you turn away from the weirdly darkened reflection, there's...someone else in the room. Other than Griffin, of course—the acid's barely kicking in yet and he's already sharper, brighter, more _there_ than before. The other person (well, ghost) is...

Blurry. Pale. She flickers, if you look right at her, and even if you focus just to the left or right of her it's hard to assemble an image. The best you can do is impressions—small, dark-haired ( _long dark hair that her lover braided, combed, touched gently, pressed kisses into_ ), as delicate and antique as the quilt on the bed. There's probably more impressions to gather, but you're off balance from the flash of memory you got when you looked at her face. 

Not that she really has one. You're pretty sure this was part of the plot of a couple horror movies, but here it's just...

Kind of sad. You feel bad for her, you think. Griffin said...You already forgot the exact wording even though it couldn't have been more than an hour ago at the most, but something about remembering. He does, and she doesn't. She doesn't remember enough to let her features be clear enough to form an expression, but you still read pure longing hopefullness in every line of her insubstantial body as she steps towards you and holds out both hands. 

Griffin's watching you. You ignore him—mostly because you know you're about to do something he'd tell you was stupid—and reach out to take the pale lady's hand. 

Her touch is...well, insubstantial. For the first second, anyway. Then it's _cold_ , and you flinch and shudder and close your eyes against a wave of vertigo—

And open them to darkness. 

...huh. "What—" 

Your voice echoes, and you stop talking almost instantly. That's more than unsettling. It doesn't help that when you look down all you see under your feet is more void...and your unconscious body. Laying on nothing. 

Uh oh. 

Then you blink, and shapes start to resolve themselves. It's still weirdly dreamlike, but hey, still an improvement. Griffin's not visible, but the room is back (sort of; the only thing with any real sharpness is the mirror you hung your jacket on) and the sense of being untethered is just a little fainter. 

Your body is still very much there. Instead of thinking about it too much, you turn back to the ghost. The new one, not Griffin. "Alright. You've got me, now what do you want?" 

She looks at you for a long moment. (Well. You think she looks at you. It's hard to tell, with that vague blur where her face would be.) Then she moves past you without seeming to move at all, turning her head and beckoning as she steps towards the door.

...this is probably a bad idea. 

Fuck it. You nod and follow her, doing your best to not _obviously_ double take as she reaches for the knob and...well, you can't say that she opens it. Opens a—a ghost of it? Like a double exposure, almost, an image of the door opening when the physical one that you know you'd see if you weren't in this drugged and dreamlike state ( _if you were in your body_ , you very carefully don't think) stays firmly unchanged. 

You close your eyes when you walk through the solid iteration. Griffin might not mind passing through solid objects, but you're pretty sure you would. The ghost doesn't hesitate in the hall; again you follow her through the door she opens an echo of, closing your eyes as you pass through the real version. 

This room is dark. You're aware of that like you're aware of ambient temperature or of background noise; it doesn't prevent you from seeing what she's doing—stepping to another sharply defined object, not a mirror this time but a small dresser. She looks at you, beckons you closer, and when you take a step forward she pulls one of the drawers open. 

It takes you a second to realize that it's not just an image of the drawer opening. She's actually opened it. Opened it, and reached inside—not into the drawer itself, but above it, into the hole it should slot into—and brought out the image, the memory, the _ghost_ of a leatherbound book, something small and well-worn, obviously handmade and so obviously loved that it hurts a little bit. 

She holds it up—for you to see, not to take—and gestures at the dresser. It's funny—you didn't really realize how much of what you think of as facial expression is body language; her desperation for you to understand is much more obvious than you're comfortable with. 

That doesn't mean you know what she's showing you, though. "...I don't understand." 

Her shoulders jerk. There's no sound, but the little motion's still recognizable as a sob. The book melts out of her hands and she reaches into the drawer again—slower this time, like you're supposed to catch the secret of how exactly the book's hidden, but you _can't_ and you _don't_ , the acid isn't giving you anything like clarity and you know you could stand here and watch the ghost show you the hiding place a thousand times and still not be able to find the trick of opening it on your own—

Not by watching. But watching might not be your only option. 

Shit. 

This is another bad idea. Then again, what does it matter? You raise a hand as the book dissolves into mist again, waiting for her to look at you. Turn her head towards you. Whatever. When she does...

Well. You hold out your hands. Palms-up, even though you can't bring yourself to look down when you do that. Looking at her isn't comfortable either, but it's...better. It's better. You can definitely handle that. 

"Try this way?" 

She tilts her head to the side. Considering it, you guess. Probably not giving you time to decide to back out, even if that's what you're struggling not to do. 

Maybe with another minute you would have pulled your hands back. She doesn't give it to you, though—just as it occurs to you that maybe this isn't the best of ideas, the ghost reaches out to take your outstretched hands. 

_Cold. It's cold, because death is coldness with the occasional spark of a memory arcing through—warmth and light, clarity where there is only a soft blur. Memories—_

( _warm hands in yours_ )

( _brown eyes like birch bark stripped to write lovenotes on_ ) 

( _her name on your tongue, the honey-sweetness of speaking it remembered long after you've forgotten your own_ )

Back off. Back the fuck down. (The little corner of you that still _is_ you wonders hazily whose thought that is; it doesn't feel like one of your own. Too strong, too assertive; you can't imagine saying anything in that tone to anyone.) We're here for a god damn reason, now let's finish business and quit with the fuckin' astral projection shit. 

...yeah. That's different enough from your normal internal monologue to be jarring, actually. It startles you out of the spiral you're falling into—the lure of what the ghost _does_ remember of her life. You think it startles her too, because for a second everything dissolves into mental static—

And then you feel it. The memory of a tiny depression in a smooth wood surface against your fingers, a grip to pull the hidden compartment out. 

Bingo, you think, in that way that doesn't feel like you at all. 

Then you blink. Maybe for the first time since you made the unbelievably stupid move of touching a strange ghost. You blink, and for a second everything's unbelievably dark. Then you open your eyes to the vaguely surprising sight of Cape leaning over you. 

"Hi," she says, _almost_ hiding an amused smile. Behind and above her, Griffin looks not nearly as amused. "Did you have a nice trip?" 

You sift through what thoughts you're currently capable of and come up with something. "I think...I think I was a lesbian for a minute." 

Whatever they were expecting, it wasn't that. Cape and Griffin gain identical baffled looks; you take the opportunity to drop your head back down and close your eyes. 

Just for a minute. You just need a minute.


	9. Chapter 9

Cape lets you lie on the floor for another ten minutes or so. You're not sure how long you stay down there, actually—your sense of time is sort of shot right now. Not long enough and too long at the same time, you guess.

The not long enough part is entirely your fault, because Cape's not pressuring you to get up at all. All she's doing is sitting cross-legged with her back against the wall, reading Griffin's texts and tapping one back to him every so often. Neither of them are going to make you get up; you could spend the night here. 

Except. 

You can't. You'd love to, but you can't—there's something in your head, something like an itch that you can't ignore. You can't scratch it by staying here, either, which means...

Well. 

Cape looks up as you roll over and push yourself up off the floor, cocking her head to the side and rising with way more grace than you just showed. She intercepts you before you can take more than two staggering steps towards the door; the way she steadies you and stops you in your tracks at the same time is just slightly surprising. You don't know why you'd be surprised that she's stronger than you are. "Whoa there, Ray. I'm pretty sure you're supposed to lay down and sleep it off, and the bed's in the _other_ direction." 

"I'm not that high." Honestly, you don't think that's even a lie. Dizzy, yes; tripping balls again, no. Probably, anyway. "Look, we're going one room over, for like—a minute. Two minutes."

"Kid, everyone knows that means half an hour at the very least—"

"Shut up, Griffin." 

"Hey, am I wrong?"

He might be. You sort of already forgot what you were arguing about. Instead of trying to remember enough to continue it, you try to pull away from Cape (it's a wasted effort, unsurprisingly) and settle for tugging her in the direction you want to go, out into the hallway. 

Where Bee's waiting to ambush you. "You didn't say anything about your human being a psychic—" 

"Medium." You, Cape, and Griffin all correct him at more or less the same time. That's actually impressive. 

Bee is noticeably unimpressed. "Well, you didn't say he's _anything_ talented. I could have made a deal to—hey, that room's not finished—" 

Weird, because it looks pretty good to you. Then again, you're pretty much zeroed in on the dresser—Cape finally lets you go, maybe to block Bee from whatever he's trying to do now, and you find yourself way steadier on your feet than you really expected as you step across to pull the drawer open. It doesn't slide as easily as you remember it—Bee keeps things spotless, sure, but he doesn't maintain them for use. There's a squeak of wood on metal, and a louder yelp of outrage from behind you. 

You don't turn around. Part of you is terrified that you'll lose the memory of how to get the little hidden compartment open if you stop doing what you're doing, and you can't risk that. So you ignore Bee, you slide the drawer out another couple inches, slip your hand in, feel around with your fingertips... _there_. 

The catch isn't so much complicated as frozen up with disuse; once you manage to get it loose, the book falls into your hand and you bring it out more carefully than you've ever handled anything that wasn't going to kill you. It's handbound, the cover made of some kind of cloth and embroidered with...violets, you think. Purple flowers, anyway, ones that've only faded a little bit. 

The sight of it shuts Bee up, when you turn around. It's Cape you look at when you manage to pull your eyes away from the delicately embroidered cover, though, and it's Cape you hold the book out to. 

She spares it one glance and then meets your eyes. You're still recently high; your brain wants to make connections between the gold of her eyes and a harvest moon, and it's not even close to that time of the year. "You want me to take it?" she asks, much more gently than you expect. 

"It's not for me." You've got a headache. You can't think of how to explain, even though this should be simple. "It's not—she wants it seen. Wants people to know—but I'm not, I'm not the right one to deal with it."

"You did say your ghost was a lesbian." Cape shakes her head and takes the book out of your hands, carefully opening it to check the pages. Bee tries to sidle up behind her and get a look; she swivels to keep it out of his view. "Bee, stop _spying_." 

"That's my property, _Capricorn._ " 

"Mmm-hm, do you want to convene the Court over it?" Cape gives him a brilliant smile when she doesn't get an answer, closing the book again and patting your shoulder. "Look, I'll put your name as the owner of the collection it's from when I get it scanned and published, all right?" 

(You really hope she's talking to Bee and not you. You can't quite sort out the context well enough to be sure right now.)

Bee growls under his breath—not words, just a sound that's full of frustration and aggression. You take a step back, but Cape just laughs...which makes you want to take _another_ step back. Funny, you didn't think she could actually be that scary. "Really, Bee? Intimidating him isn't going to do anything—he already gave it to me, and we both know _I'm_ not afraid of you." 

"It wasn't his to give." Each word comes out almost bitten off. 

"It wasn't yours either." Cape opens the book again, very gently turning a few pages to find something. "It belongs to...Joanna. Or Erin, maybe. Not you." 

"They're dead, they don't have a say—it belongs with the collection—" 

Beside you, Griffin makes a sharp, irritated sound. "Alright, I've had enough of this bullshit." 

You don't need weird ghost insight to have a vague idea of what he's planning. "Griffin, don't—" 

But there's no command in it, and anyway you're too slow. Griffin turns to scoop up the small decorative plate from its spot on top of the dresser (you catch a glimpse of a barcode sticker on the bottom of it as you try to intercept, so it's not an antique, thank god) dodges your grab neatly enough that you wonder if he's reading your mind, and throws it like an exceptionally fragile frisbee. He misses Cape (again, thank god) and somehow gets it through the open door, into the hall—

And it shatters against the far wall, maybe six inches from Bee's head. 

Tackling Griffin is stupid. You do it anyway, if only for the tiny satisfaction of seeing the shock on his face when you actually bring the both of you crashing to the floor.

* * *

It takes Cape a while to shoo Bee out of the room and coax you up off the floor. You're not really sure why she bothers—right now you just want to spend the night here. The weird ghost obligation is done, you're done, this is enough. 

Well, enough for you anyway. Griffin and Cape are another story, and you're not really competent enough to stand up against both of them. Eventually, you end up outside on the porch, with a can of beer in your hand and no clear idea how you got here. 

You don't even _like_ beer. "Remind me again why I thought this was a good idea."

"Because you have parent issues," Cape says without even a second's pause, flashing you a smile that seems to hold something of an invitation to join her on the wooden bench. (You don't move from your spot over on the steps.) "The ones that put you in therapy, not the ones that make you have questionable taste in women. Or men. Or, you know, either."

"Uh." No taste probably counts as bad taste. Maybe you're just gay and in denial; at least that would get you definitively disowned instead of in the weird twilight zone of familial status you're stuck in right now. "...look, I'm pretty sure everyone else has more problems with parent stuff than me. What about you?" 

Cape shrugs and leans back. "I got lucky," she says, frowning thoughtfully at the can in her hands like she can analyze the exact contents by looking at it. (Maybe she can. You still don't know all the weird shit she can do.) "Both my parents seem to think I'm the best thing that ever happened to them." 

"Yeah." She knows what your parents think of you, you think. Maybe even in more depth than you do, honestly—you're starting to suspect you just block out most of the knowledge of that part of your life. You mirror her as she takes another swallow of her drink; you swear you're switching to something nonalcoholic after this one, but it feels weird to _not_ match her in number of beverages consumed. "I think mine said I was supposed to be that a couple times." 

"When they wanted you to feel guilty, huh?" Cape's eyes flick to your face, and she laughs as you dodge the responsibility of answering it by taking another mouthful of carbonated alcoholic beverage. "Yeah, I know. Parents suck. _Humans_ suck—fae can't quite lie like that, and deer don't think of it." 

"...deer." 

"Yeah, my dad." She shrugs and sets her can down, turning one of those maybe-magical smiles on you. "Did we never talk about the half that's not fae?" 

"No. Well, maybe when it was Griffin driving." 

"Ohhh, gotcha. Anyway." Another sip; that can has to be almost empty by now. "Mom's a fae—a courthopper, I think she was Southern Dark last time I checked—and Dad _was_ human once, before I was born, but he made a bad deal and a couple good ones and now he's, like. A white-tail deer." 

"...your father is a deer?" 

"Well yeah, where'd you think these came from?" Cape reaches up to tap one of the nubby antlers poking out of her long reddish hair. They're more obvious than usual; she found a scrunchie somewhere and pulled her hair back in a ponytail at some point today. "He's got fae immortality too, but no one really talks about that." 

You sort of see why. "So he's just...a deer?" 

"A smart deer. Mom made sure he kept human speech and thoughts, but he's still a deer." 

"Your dad's a deer. Okay. And your mom..." 

Cape giggles. Actually giggles, before she drains the last of her drink and crushes the can in both hands, tossing it in the general direction of the bin on the corner of the porch and missing by at least a couple feet. "Dammit—but yeah, a lot of fae are furries. Like, eighty percent of fae have an intelligent-animal kink, and they tend to deal with it by finding humans who're either into the same thing or are horny enough to get tricked into it, you know?" 

You don't know. You have absolutely no idea how to respond to that. "Uh." 

Not that Cape really seems to mind. "I think that's why the High Courts use wildshape magic as a punishment so often, honestly. Like it doesn't hurt you, not really? Not like losing your name or a limb would, not like spending too long exiled in or exiled _from_ the Lands would...you're just an animal, for a while. Most of the time they'll let you bargain your way out early if you put any effort into it, not that most people do." 

"Bring up the Wild Hunt," Griffin says from his spot over on the opposite corner of the porch from the trash bin, where he's leaning against the railing. You'd forgotten he was there for a second. " _That_ shit ain't harmless." 

You flip him off. Cape laughs, and asks, "What did he say?" 

"That the Wild Hunt isn't harmless." You don't have the energy to lie or redirect. You don't really have the energy to get caught between the ghost and the fae again either, but. Well. 

"Oh." Cape's face clouds, and she shakes her head, twisting a strand of hair around her fingers. "Yeah...there's that. I mean, they don't _always_ end with, you know, a kill and a feast and a trophy, but...yeah. Maybe one time in twenty, the quarry's caught." 

"One in _twenty_?" Griffin scoffs. "That's gotta be a lie." 

"I thought you said the fae don't lie." You don't look up at him as you say it—it's an observation, not an attack. He takes it as the latter, though, and makes a few assorted noises and then shuts up. That was easier than you expected. "Griffin thinks you're lowballing." 

Cape snorts. "He's a Hunter, of course he does." She leans over to grab the next-last can lined up on the rail, popping the tab open and taking a drink of it before cocking her head at you. "You want the breakdown?" 

"...sure." 

"Okay, so." Another swallow and she sets the can aside, spreading her hands. "We're not even looking at the Hunts where a fae's playing the quarry. That's most of them anyway; it's how we exile half the time, and you only die if you did something _really_ fucked up. Or if you refuse to run. Humans think it's like—a sport? But it's a _ceremony_ —we don't really do paperwork, you know?" 

A response seems to be required, so you nod even though you do not in fact know. Over in his corner Griffin lets out what sounds like an exasperated sigh. You don't look over at him. "It's not a game." 

"No, it isn't. And with humans—well." She shrugs and makes a face. "Most of them survive. You don't hear about those as often as you hear about the deer with a human face disemboweled in the woods, or rabbits the size of a man, humans with the heads of pigs—" 

"Cape, I'm just barely buzzed enough that if you keep going I _will_ throw up on you." 

"Oh. Oops. Anyway, most of the humans who run from that—not the ones who run _with_ us, that's a whole other category—do it out of hubris most of the time." 

"...hubris." You don't think you've ever hear someone use that word in a conversation before. 

Cape nods in a way you can only classify as _enthusiastic._ "Yeah, like—it's a ceremony for humans too, you know? If you think you're fit to live in the Lands or the Court, if you think you're strong enough or good enough, you have to be tested." 

"And if you fail, you die." 

"No—well." An unhappy look flickers across her face and disappears almost before you register it. "Sometimes. The Hounds can be difficult to reign in if they scent some types of crimes, even if the purpose of the hunt isn't to put the quarry on trial for that. Usually, though, if you're caught and innocent of all but pride, the worst that'll happen to you is you'll wake up marked and with a hangover." 

"Like the one you're going to have tomorrow." You'll be the one driving, you guess. Or Griffin, overlapping your body and pressing your mind into unconsciousness, which is objectively a better idea. You're actually sort of looking forward to getting to sleep most of the ride away. 

But Cape laughs and shakes her head, tipping her drink at you. "Oh, not even a little bit. Not off _this_ , anyway." Her golden eyes go wistful for a second, emotion so obvious that _you_ nearly feel it. "Now good mead? _Berry_ mead? That'll get me drunk. All my stashes are in other states, though. I think we've got some with a friend in Texas, we could totally detour..." 

" _No_ ," Griffin says, very firmly. 

You flip him off again. "If I get to try some? Deal." 

"Kid, didn't we have the talk about not eating fae food? _And_ the one about not making deals with fae?" 

"Technically, I don't think mead is a food." 

"It would be counted as one in the Lands," Cape corrects you. "Or if it was made there and brought here, maybe. What I'm talking about is just...honey made made with blackberry syrup. Maybe blueberry—I was a little tipsy on the last batch when I was setting this one up, I don't really remember." 

"You made alcohol?" Huh. You didn't realize that was allowed. 

"Oh yeah, mead's super easy." She smiles, and why the _hell_ do you keep looking at her right when she does that? It hits you harder than your two beers did by a factor of at least ten. "I'll teach you sometime." 

Griffin opens his mouth to weigh in on that offer. You stare at him until he closes it again. "Sounds like a plan." 

Cape giggles again, scooping up her drink and just holding it in both hands as she leans forward in her seat. "You're arguing with him again, aren't you?" 

Lie? Don't lie? One of those takes effort that you don't have the energy to expend right now. "Pretty much. He's being a dick about you." 

"I am _not_!" Griffin protests. 

Cape hums thoughtfully, draining the can and painstakingly crushing it. "Going by what you've told me? Nothing he says is really wrong. It's just not true for _me_." 

"Part of what he says is that it's all fae." 

"Well, that's just because his sample size sucks." Golden eyes meet yours; you're lost again until she blinks. "Look at hunter's history—once upon a time being a werewolf or a vampire was a death sentence if they caught you—" 

"And now we marry them," Griffin murmurs. 

"—and now you have kids with them." Cape spreads her hands, adding a flick at the end that sends the crushed can flying across the porch to clatter into the bin. "Things _shift_. Things shift a _lot_ , and even if fae move slower than most, we do still move. Some of us, anyway." 

You're a little distracted by the fact that she didn't even look when she threw that can. You don't think you could have landed it that perfectly if you had a dozen tries. "So..." 

"So." Cape shrugs and gets to her feet, smoothing her hair back. "Listen to him, when it's not me. If you want to double check and see just how paranoid his filter is, I'm always right here. Well, not right here—I'm going to bed. You should too. My bed or your bed. Or the couch. I don't think Bee cares where you sleep, to be honest." 

You think about how exactly Bee might feel about you after you gave Cape the book instead of him. "...I think I'm going to sleep out in the car." 

Cape groans and grabs your hand. You're startled enough that you don't even try to keep her from tugging you back into the house.


End file.
